2024 Year in Review

As we close out 2024, we’re taking a moment to celebrate the positive impact tourism has had on our community. From supporting local businesses to enriching our cultural scene, tourism plays a vital role in the Greater St. Cloud area. Did you know that 21% of ALL spend in St. Cloud came from visitors to the community, those are new dollars being invested and we cannot thank each traveler enough! This year in review will showcase some of the many ways we’ve worked together to enhance the visitor experience and strengthen our local economy.

As a whole, our office send 192 leads and booked 108 events and helped book over 32,734 hotel rooms in Greater St. Cloud for events with an estimated economic impact of over 6.5 million dollars alone in 2024! That is a whole lot of people coming to town to spend money and time in our greater area. We also distributed 41,000 visitor guides and we had over 1 Million views on our website!

Events

For the 14th year, St. Cloud Technical College hosted the State VEX Robotics Competition at the River’s Edge Convention Center. This celebration of young minds exploring their options in the STEM fields is an amazing event to behold. Kids from elementary to college ages participate in building, programming, and competing with robots. The tournament draws thousands of people to St. Cloud, and highlights an important area of study and innovation. We can’t wait to see them again in 2025!

New in 2024 was the addition of hosting First Robotics in April for the 2024 Regional Championship Competition called the Granite City Regional. For First Robotics, the growth was explosive, from 2 teams in 2006 to 224 in 2020, when the pandemic hit. During its peak years, more than 4,850 students were actively involved on Minnesota teams and 63.2% of Minnesota high school students – at 231 schools affiliated with those teams – had access to a FIRST Robotics team. More than half of the teams were at small schools in Greater Minnesota, a region in which many STEM workers, especially engineers, at Twin Cities manufactures are raised. And for many years, Minnesota has had the third-largest FIRST Robotics state contingent of teams in the nation, trailing only Michigan and California. St. Cloud is proud to host their Minnesota event and look forward to their return in April, 2025. 

In April, the well-known Earth Day Half Marathon took place in downtown St. Cloud! This event, which includes a 5K on Friday evening and the half-marathon on Saturday, is a huge draw for runners, fitness enthusiasts, and their fans from all over the state and beyond. It is the unofficial kickoff to racing season in Minnesota, and with the downtown venue featuring the fitness expo at River’s Edge, it proved to be an extremely fun and successful year! Earth Day will be back in April of 2025!

In August, St. Cloud hosted the Minnesota Senior Games, bringing in over 700 athletes ages 50+ to compete in 20+ different sporting events all across Greater St. Cloud. From cycling to pickleball and bowling to tennis, there was something for everyone of every skill-level to compete in. This inspiring display of perseverance and determination was only the beginning, too. The 2024 Games were a national qualifier for the the 2025 national Games in Des Moines, IA where athletes who competed in the state games will go head to head with the winners of other states. The 2024 Games welcomed athletes from 184+ MN Cities and 24 states. The Minnesota Senior Games will be held in 2025 + 2026 in Mankato, MN before coming back to St. Cloud in 2027 + 2028. 

Among many mid-size and small meetings, Greater St. Cloud was host to some considerable sized events, most commonly Statewide Association Annual Conferences, such as Lions Minnesota, Minnesota District Council of Assemblies of God, International Association of Fairs and Expositions – Zone 4, Minnesota Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association Conference, Grand Lodge of MN, Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, Special Operations Training Association, Order of the Eastern Star, Minnesota School Nutrition Association, Towards Zero Death conference, Wissota Promoters, Minnesota Association of Townships, and more!

Throughout the year, there were several sporting events that drew thousands of visitors to the Greater St. Cloud area, including:

  • The Quarry Classic, a basketball tournament in February seeing over 2,000 visitors
  • Midwest Coin Concepts, a pool and darts tournament in March seeing over 750 visitors 
  • Minnesota Youth Athletic Services, a Gopher state Baseball spring invite with 9U, 10U, 11U, 12U combined seeing over 1,000 visitors 
  • 2024 NJCAA Region 13 Baseball tournament + Super Regional Tournament 
  • Waite Park Babe Ruth Baseball Classics, 10U, 11U, 12U, 14U, HS and more combined seeing over 1,500 visitors
  • St. Cloud Blue Sox Bash Baseball Tournament seeing over 3,000 visitors
  • Minnesota Youth Soccer Association, seeing over 4,000 visitors for D2, D3, state tournaments, 11u, 19u
  • VFW Sports State VFW Baseball tournament 
  • and more!

 

Notable Moments

Botanical bliss: Top 10 US gardens for plant lovers – USA Today named Munsinger and Clemens Gardens in the top 10 readers’ choice 2024 awards. 

St. Cloud Area Restaurant Week 2024, featuring 7 days of food and beverage categories aimed to promote the regions food and drink scene and promote local growth. This week partnered with 6 foodie influencers, gained entries from 6 states for gift card giveaways, saw over 26K views on the website, and saw great promotion from news sources. 

Bring Ya A** – The “Bring Ya A**” campaign was a fun, unofficial rallying cry that emerged from Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards’ post-game interview. While talking to Charles Barkley, Edwards encouraged him to visit Minnesota with that now-famous phrase. Explore Minnesota seized on the viral moment, using it to promote the state with a playful spin on Edward’s words. Visit Greater St. Cloud was one of the first to join EMT, it has since been seen statewide. This flashpan trend make a splash on socials with 18K Impressions and 489 engagements including being picked up by the State.

Trump/Vance Raly at Herb Brooks Arena in St. Cloud, despite the short notice of this happening, major attraction was drawn to St. Cloud during the Trump Rally and Visit Greater St. Cloud saw more than 10.6K unique visitors to their event page during the week of the rally and over 27K Views.

Ugliest House In America, The “Barbie House” in St. Cloud has a new look after winning HGTV’s “Ugliest House In America” and getting a $150,000 remodel. 

Online

Looking for inspiration for your next trip to Greater St. Cloud? Our website is packed with information to help you plan your adventure. Here are the pages that most intrigued our visitors in 2024:

Top Pages

Social Media

We love interacting with you on Facebook and Instagram, and especially love when you share moments with us! in 2024 we saw a reach on Facebook of 1.1M (up 76% from 2023) and have 14.2K followers. Here are some of our top posts from 2024, thank you for being a part of them!

Top Facebook Posts (by impressions, not including contests)

Lilac’s, events, Ice Cream, and more ice cream – the key to your hearts on Facebook!

Top Instagram Posts (by impression)

This year, you guys really loved outdoor activities!

In addition, we had a great 2024 with media placements in Meetings + Events, Leisure, Sports, and Group markets. Here is a look at a few!

Now, we could continue but we think this is a pretty good snapshot of some amazing things that have happened in the last 12 months. Make sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay in the know of all things Greater St. Cloud!