The Sedona International Film Festival more than double the attendees at this year’s regularly scheduled festival than the rescheduled festival last June.
If it seemed like all the hotel bookings and traffic from SIFF came back quicker than usual, it’s because it did.
With only eight months between the 2021 festival in June and the 2022 festival in February, there was some concern with booking films, hotels and traffic issues too soon after the previous year.
“We had about 9,000 attendees [over the 9 days] at this year’s festival, versus about 5,000 in June — 40% of those are local,” Sedona International Film Festival Executive Director Patrick Schweiss said.
Based on these numbers, 5,400 of the attendees over the nine-day festival in February were from out of town, he said.
According to the Sedona Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau, the occupancy rate from Feb. 19 to Feb. 26, the week of the festival, averaged out at around 75%. While the week’s average is in line with February’s average rate, the opening weekend of February’s festival was also the month’s best at a 92% occupancy rate.
Looking back at last year’s June festival, the city’s occupancy rate sat at around 80% the entire week from June 12 to June 20, with the following weeks after the festival shooting up to a higher 85%. These numbers for the week also line up with June’s typical occupancy rates.
Although these rates cannot be attributed directly to the festival, it is an indication of some of the effect that the festival brings to the city and businesses. February’s increase of attendees could also be attributed to the return of a wintertime festival with cheaper travel rates for visitors than the summer months, as well as moving away from pandemic challenges and scares.
Although occupancy rates were higher at the beginning of this year’s festival, many of the festival guest’s hotel rooms were still donated by local resorts, like Enchantment. According to Schweiss, this has been a successful partnership for the past few years of the festival.
“We are so grateful not only to our incredible film lovers that came out and supported a live festival but this community every year rallies around us everyone from the title sponsor building, Northern Arizona Healthcare to all the presenting sponsors who all give so generously the financial support that’s necessary, to the hotels that give us all the hotel rooms and the restaurants that feed our VIPs and host the parties,” Schweiss said
