From the 16 beach neighborhoods of South Walton to the charming communities north of the Choctawhatchee Bay, Walton County offers limitless opportunities for creating lifelong memories. Residents and repeat visitors will tell you that what draws them to the destination is its blend of familiarity and pleasant surprises. With world-class dining, vibrant festivals, endless activities and pristine natural beauty, there’s always something new to discover here. This incredible variety creates truly personalized experiences year-round.
It’s no big surprise that tourism is the leading economic engine, but the true breadth of its overall impact may surprise some. In 2022, the county welcomed roughly 5.3 million visitors. Though occupancy rates were slightly lower and travel party sizes smaller, room rates saw a 5.8 percent increase over the previous year.
Walton County’s Tourism Department also worked hard to help the destination get featured in major publications such as Travel + Leisure, The Wall Street Journal, Fodor’s Travel, AFAR and Condé Nast Traveler. This ensured that we even had plenty of face time with those who didn’t get the chance to visit. Just planting those seeds for future trips! Marketing efforts covered everything from print to digital and social media. And to put it all into perspective, for every dollar spent on marketing, visitors spent almost $500 here – not a bad return on investment!
Visitors’ direct spending totaled more than $4.8 billion (about $900 per day of each guest’s trip). This supported more than 47,000 jobs throughout the county, while helping to lower residents’ taxes by an average of $2,109 per household.
In addition, this financial boost from tourism allowed us to invest even more back into the local communities. This included about $3.9 million spent on local maintenance and improvements.
A clean-up campaign extended along more than 42 miles of multi-use path and 20 miles of sugar-white sand, as well as more than 60 beach, bay and lake access points that we all know and love. In all, we hauled away more than 1,000 TONS of garbage – not so light cleaning!
South Walton’s beach safety program also saw continued expansion last year, with roughly 7.2 million texts sent regarding current surf conditions. These daily updates bolstered our community’s ongoing efforts to educate everyone about the beach safety flags. Research showed that nearly 9 in 10 beachgoers were knowledgeable of the beach flags’ meanings.
Overall, the total economic impact of tourism in 2022 was over $7.2 billion. This marked an impressive increase over the (very successful) year before. It’s a testament to how our whole community works together to make improvements while promoting them as incredible places to both live and visit – from the northern state line right down to our sugar-white sand along the Gulf of Mexico.
We all must be doing something right, because 95 percent of visitors said they would return. And why wouldn’t they? Life really is good in Walton County, and only getting better!