Big Announcement Next Week

Dr. Jack Walters, of the University of South Florida's Lakeland campus, will be releasing his take on the attendance and economic impact of last April's Sun 'n Fun Fly-In.

We at Aero-News are particularly interested in these figures and how Dr Walters's team arrived at them; we're promised that he'll address a lot of our questions.

You may recall that we have always been highly skeptical of the attendance figures Sun 'n Fun releases each year, on their 'estimated' attendance. Those numbers drive many revenue-producing machines for Sun 'n Fun, including what the Fly-In can charge its vendors, program and on-site advertisers, and the government.

Government? Yup -- Sun 'n Fun, because of its "economic impact" in Lakeland and Polk County (FL), has a little system of getting taxpayer monies to subsidize its principals' big salaries. Cool -- but this year, due in large part to some real reporting in the usually-lapdog Lakeland Ledger and ours truly, some have decided that real numbers should be used, instead of the made-up numbers of the past.

We wonder out loud, for instance, why Sun 'n Fun historically claims 600,000+ attendees, and yet sells ad space in its programs (many of which are given away to vendors and press, and many of which remain unsold through the end of the show) based on a claimed print run of just 20,000.

In fact, there was a tiny ruckus a few years ago, and Sun 'n Fun responded by hiring a 'professional consultant,' to take attendance surveys. That consulting firm was owned by the wife of a SNF Board member... the attendance figures came out just the way SNF wanted them to.

Now, the University of South Florida has been called to lend an air of realism to the estimates. It's a step in the right direction; but we still have serious concerns:

• The USF students and volunteers, who were passing out the survey forms, were in evidence only on the heaviest days of the show. An extrapolation from those days would, naturally, be inflated by a factor of probably between three and five.
• The survey asked things like, "How many in your party?" and "How much are you spending each night for hotels?" and "How many nights will you be staying?" If a family of four all got the surveys (and there was nothing in place to assure they wouldn't), the results could be inflated, again.
• We don't know the methodology, yet, that Dr Walters is using to extrapolate the economic impact; but if he uses the survey results to profile some "average" attendee, it's a cinch that those who went through the spectator gates (as opposed to those who came through the vendor gates, and those who stayed on the grounds in the camping area) would be over-represented; and the spectators would probably be found in more hotels and restaurants. Thus, the economic impact of the spectators would be extrapolated to the campers...
• We do know that stacks of survey forms were left altogether unattended for entire days, at the ballot boxes, so someone with an agenda (and who, outside Sun 'n Fun, would?) could stuff the ballot boxes with as many phony surveys as they'd like. Obviously, this hole in the system could render the survey useless.

What if they wanted real numbers?

We hate to simply run down somebody's half-year+ of work, without offering a more-robust solution, so here's ours:

• Everybody on the SNF grounds had to have a wrist band, and every group had its own kind of wristband (or was otherwise trackable, as to their function at the show). Sun 'n Fun knows how many wristbands were issued, of which types, and on which days. They even have signed waivers from all attendees (which we were obliged to sign, to get those wristbands).
• Now, if SNF knows how many vendor wristbands were issued on a given day, they would have a handle on the maximum number of vendors who could have attended. The fact that some vendors used multiple crews could also be addressed: when a new band was issued on, say, Thursday, for Cessna, then it's a good guess that a member of the Cessna crew (who had been there until Thursday) went home.
• SNF knows how many performers and crew had bands, and when they were issued -- and when the performers were through performing (and presumably left, to go to their next jobs). That number is pretty solid.
• SNF knows how many weekly passes were issued, and on which days. (A weekly pass issued on Thursday has less potential than a weekly pass issued on Monday.)
• SNF knows how many daily passes were issued. Each counts for one person, one day.
• SNF knows how many volunteer bands were issued, too; and how many press, and how many daily spectator -- all that information, along with signed and dated waivers, is available. A look at the written, documentable information that Sun 'n Fun already has, could clear up a lot of the speculation that is inherent in sloppily-done surveys, or the more-traditional guesstimates.

At any rate, a new study will soon reveal the economic impact of what is still probably the United States' second-largest private aircraft convention and show (though we get thousands of reports each year from folks who have abandoned this fading event--and the trend is getting worse). Findings from a seven-month number-crunching session conducted by USF Lakeland personnel will be released next Thursday (November 6, 2003) at 10:00 a.m. on the local campus. The event, to be held in room LAC 1183, will showcase information gathered by principal investigator Dr. Jack Walters, Assistant Dean and Management Faculty, and investigator Lynda Fletcher, a member of the Institutional Research, Effectiveness, and Planning Unit on the Lakeland Campus. Dr. Walters and Ms. Fletcher were assisted in the project by USF staff, students, and community volunteers.

The economic impact study was conducted as a public service by USF-Lakeland in support of economic development in the region. USF Lakeland researchers used survey techniques to develop a picture of Fly-In attendees and their participation and spending habits. The findings were then extrapolated to cover the estimated population of attendees to develop economic impact estimates.

Results from the study will be used as a tool for strategic planning by Sun 'n Fun leaders to increase the size and impact of the Fly-In event and to develop aviation-related events throughout the year.

We hope that Dr Walters and team will have good explanations for our concerns, and that some day we'll be able to get the Sun 'n Fun organization to simply tally up the information they already have, to arrive at a realistic and verifiable attendance number. With that in hand, SNF could then go a long way toward credibility by polling the myriad campers, vendors, and local volunteers, to find out just how much they're spending on lodging, restaurant meals, and so on. Until then, we'll just continue to assume the organization will inflate their numbers as much as the sleepy (or complicit) Lakeland City Council and Polk County Commissioners will allow them to --ed. 

FMI: www.lklnd.usf.edu