NEMO, S.D. – South Dakota tourism continues an upward trajectory, even as the largest annual tourist event seeks younger attendees to ensure its future.
The state broke an all-time record last year with 14.7 million total visitors. Those visitors spent $4.96 billion, marking a nearly 5% increase from the previous year and breaking another record.
The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally regularly accounts for hundreds of thousands of visitors on its own. That reliable annual boost makes the rally’s continued success a priority for local and state entities.
Biker breakfast funds first responders
A winding highway through Vanocker Canyon leads to a small Black Hills town called Nemo. The twisting roads invite thousands of bikers a year during the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to pass through.
Jerry and Patsy Hood have made the most of the reliable traffic. For more than 20 years, they’ve hosted a biker breakfast during the rally: $13 dollars for an all-you-can-eat meal. The proceeds go to the Nemo Volunteer Fire Department, where Jerry Hood served as long-time fire chief.
The Hoods estimate they raised $25,000 dollars in 10 days last year. And that’s a slower year than usual because it rained the first few days of the 2023 rally.
“This is actually our biggest fundraiser,” said Patsy Hood. “Probably two-thirds to three-fourths of our budget is raised during this time. We get very little help from the state or from the counties because we’re not a tax district. So we’ve continued to use the biker breakfast as our main fund drive.”
Jerry organizes the feed – working with food vendors, ensuring portable toilets are available, corralling volunteers.
“We got volunteers from the community to do the serving so the fire department can do the cooking and also be able to go on calls,” he said. “Because we usually average three to six calls during that week. Wrecks, emergency illness or whatever.”
The Hoods said the breakfast has become its own tradition for some rally-goers. They see many of the same patrons year after year. Patsy Hood said they don’t have to advertise much. Rally traffic and word-of-mouth lead to crowds of hungry visitors year after year, sometimes with lines winding across their property. The 75th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in 2015 was one of their largest crowds.
“They must have had an-hour-and-a-half to two hours in the sun,” Patsy remembered. “And they waited. That tells me that we’re doing something right.”
It will take time to tally the totals from this year’s rally, but during the first morning of serving breakfasts, Patsy Hood said multiple people had paid for a couple $13 breakfasts with hundred dollar bills. The rest is a donation to the Nemo VFD.
“Places around Nemo – a lot of ‘em benefit from the rally,” Jerry Hood said.
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is the largest single tourism event in the state. A 2022 study from Texas A&M University determined it resulted in $784 million in economic impact in South Dakota. Unlike the Nemo VFD’s biker breakfast, plenty of marketing strategies are dedicated to maintaining that economic impact for decades to come.
The 'OG' rally and the next generation
The same 2022 Texas A&M University study of the rally’s economic impact also found the average attendee is 50 years old, with 60% of respondents identifying as male.
Data from the Black Hills and Badlands Tourism Association found in the 2023 Post-Rally Summit shows the overwhelming majority of last year’s attendees were white, with 37% between the ages of 45 and 64.
However, Deb Holland, the director of communication and outreach for the City of Sturgis, said attendance for the 25-44-year-old age group increased by 3% between 2022 and 2023. Rally organizers hope new events like this year’s inaugural Sturgis TT street race attract new and more affordable motorcycle manufacturers to the rally – with younger potential bikers to follow.
“My son is 35, and it’s tough for him to afford a new Harley, but he might be able to get in on a different bike,” said Holland. She believes the street race – in partnership with the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) and American Flat Track Racing – will also help keep rally-goers in town for the second official weekend, when crowds tend to wane.
“It’s catering to that new audience, and I think that race will bring a new audience,” she said. “If you’re not changing and improving, you’re dying.”
The South Dakota Department of Tourism is also eyeing younger potential rally-goers. It recently launched its “OG HD” campaign highlighting the live music and party atmosphere of the rally. South Dakota Secretary of Tourism Jim Hagen said the campaign is intentionally broad.
“Whether you’re a biker or a non-biker, whether you ride a Harley or an Indian Motorcycle, whether you’re male, female, red, yellow, black, white – it doesn’t matter,” he said in an interview with "South Dakota Focus" last month. “We’re really trying to diversify this audience and showcase other aspects of the rally that are fun. You may not ride a motorcycle, but from concerts to doing your own scenic drives in a car, whatever. There’s just so much to experience.”
Hagen acknowledged the need to build a younger base for the rally but is optimistic that shift is already in progress.
“With the campaigns that we’ve run the last two years now, 97% of advanced bookings that we see are from people 49 years old and younger,” he said. “So, really starting to trend to a younger audience, which is great because we want to build that next generation of bikers and the excitement. And listen, there is no better place on the planet to ride a motorcycle than this state.”
Tourism: 'The front door of economic development'
Hagen has served the last four South Dakota governors, including as the Department of Tourism and Economic Development secretary during the Rounds administration.
After a few years in the private sector, Hagen was appointed as secretary of the Department of Tourism by Gov. Dennis Daugaard in 2011. Since then, Hagen has led the department through multiple record-breaking years for visitation, but that’s not necessarily his focus.
“It’s a feather in your cap to say, ‘Oh yeah, we set another record this year.’ To us, it’s more about the economic impact we’re having,” he said. “I think about the 58,000 South Dakotans who are either employed directly or indirectly because of tourism. Tourism is creating $2.2 billion in household income for those South Dakotans. Those are families who are out spending at our local stores, grocery stores, buying new cars, paying mortgages, those sorts of things. That is really what drives us.”
Hagen said the statewide impact of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally can sometimes be lost on residents in other areas.
“We’ve got bikers coming in from every corner of this state – down in the southeast, northeast, central South Dakota. They’re coming in from all different state highways and county highways, our major interstates. And we have communities throughout the state, whether it be a Sioux Falls, a Yankton, a Mitchell – others that were actually creating events to welcome those bikers.”
That’s partly why the Department of Tourism launched the Rally Rush program this year. It’s based on the success of the “Rooster Rush” program that welcomes pheasant hunters to communities around the state for pheasant hunting season.
Hagen said 35 communities around the state participated in the inaugural contest – with some financial support from the Department of Tourism – highlighting local hospitality and other attractions for bikers on their way to the rally. The Tourism Department will bestow one of the participants with the Rally Rush Rumbling Community of the Year award at the Governor’s Tourism Conference in January.
Back in small town Nemo, the financial impact of the rally lingers long after the rumble of motorcycles has faded away. Patsy and Jerry Hood like the quiet of their Black Hills town, but they understand the necessity of the tourism industry in preserving that way of life.
“If we didn’t have tourism at Nemo, the Guest Ranch wouldn’t be here. The Mercantile couldn’t make it,” Patsy said, looking just up the road at the local businesses. “Without the word getting out about a beautiful place to visit, this place would be a ghost town.”
Hagen knows all too well how his industry supports local economies and how it can even turn visitors into full-time residents.
“We call tourism the front door to economic development,” he said. “We inspire them to get to the state to experience all that makes us so special, and then we open that front door and let them walk through and dream about what could be.”
How to watch 'South Dakota Focus'
The next episode of "South Dakota Focus" airs on Thursday, Aug. 29, at 8 p.m. Central time / 7 p.m. Mountain time. It can be viewed on SDPB-TV 1, Facebook, YouTube and SD.net
The episode includes:
- A group of friends from Minnesota that has been attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally for 30 years and counting.
- Advocates for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) raise funds and awareness with the Medicine Wheel Ride.
- The financial impact of the rally on Sturgis and surrounding communities like Nemo, S.D.
