Visit Rapid City The Rapid Rundown: 2025 Tourism by the Numbers Email

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Tourism is Rapid City's bread and butter, but numbers alone don't tell a story — they need a little sizzle to land. We worked with Visit Rapid City to launch "The Rapid Rundown," a quarterly email series that turns dense tourism economics into scroll-friendly, share-worthy content.

For the inaugural edition, we tackled 2025 Tourism by the Numbers, breaking down visitor volume, spending by category, economic impact, and job creation into a visual journey anyone can follow — no economics degree required. Bold stats, punchy icons, and data viz work together to show just how much travel means to the local economy.

The real challenge? Making tax revenue and induced sales feel exciting. We leaned into bright, Black Hills-inspired imagery and a clean, equation-style breakdown (direct + indirect + induced = impact) to keep the math moving and the momentum high.

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The Rapid Rundown: 2025 Tourism by the Numbers

Travel is essential to Rapid City’s economic and cultural landscape, and 2025 was an exceptional year for it.

Each year, Visit Rapid City partners with Tourism Economics to dig into the city’s tourism data. These findings help our team and partners understand the current landscape and plan for the future.

We’re so excited to share 2025 Tourism by the Numbers!

3.9 million visitors to Rapid City
$527.3 million visitor spending
7,704 total jobs supported

Visitor Volume and Spending

Rapid City welcomed 3.9 million visitors in 2025, a 1.4% increase from the previous year.

Year	Total Visitors (Millions)
2021	3.93
2022	3.76
2023	3.78
2024	3.87
2025	3.93

More visitors meant more spending. 2025 saw $527 million total spend.

Category	Total Spending
Food & Beverage	$157M
Lodging	$156M
Retail	$89M
Transportation	$76M
Recreation	$49M

The Economic Effect

The total impact of tourism reached $776M in 2025. Let’s break it down:

$527M direct sales + $194M indirect sales + $55M induced sales = $776M total impact

Tax Takeaways

Tourism generated $117 million in government revenues for our city in 2025.

State and local taxes alone tallied $55 million — households in Rapid City would need to be taxed an additional $1,700 to replace taxes generated by visitors.

Employment

Tourism supported a total of 7.704 jobs in Rapid City in 2025 — that’s nearly 1 of every 10.

6,017 direct jobs + 1,124 indirect jobs + 563 induced jobs = 7,704 total jobs

Looking Ahead

Tourism is a huge part of what makes Rapid City great, and it’s thanks to industry leaders like you that our city is a fantastic place for visitors.

Keep a lookout for more data from the Visit Rapid City team — we’re kicking off a quarterly email series called The Rapid Rundown to keep you up to date on the latest tourism data.

In the meantime, click below to view the full 2025 report.

View the report