Editor’s note: This story is updated to correct the title. (Updated 8:40 h. 21 July 2025).
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The city of conei is known for its complex decorations that cover its streets every time a vacation rolls around.
However, every year these festivities come with a huge bill.
Conway seriously takes its celebrations, even changing its name to City of Halloween for October, when pumpkins and skeletons move around every corner. Come Christmas, the city becomes a shiny beacon straight from a movie for distinction. And the decoration does not stop on these main holidays – if there is a reason for celebration, the cone is dressed accordingly.
In the last three years alone, the city has spent more than half a million dollars on its decorations. These holiday costs, which have increased in recent years, are an effort to attract more visitors to the city, but does it work?
Year after year, the placement of holiday decorations requires a healthy dose of planning, effort and money. But the city believes that everything is worth the tourists it carries in the city and the joy it brings through its year -round residents.
“Vacations decorations and events offer extra value for the quality of life of our residents,” said city spokesman June Wood in an email to The Sun News. “In the last few years, increased decor has been associated with increased leg traffic and in exchange for more revenue for business.”
The Rivertown Christmas Celebration takes place every Thursday night before the holiday. Conway, SC Storefronts have live windows exhibitions, a vacation market and trains, festive characters and live music in the mayoralty. TSN December 13, 2024 file.
According to the city’s spending reports shared by Wood, Conway has spent more than $ 100,000 in each of the last three fiscal years to make its opportunities for holiday transformations.
During the fiscal year 2022-2023 the city spent $ 116 391 on decorations. The following year, she spent $ 19,264 on decorations. During the fiscal year 2024-2025, the total decoration reached just over $ 229,712.
Festive decorations are funded through urban “hospitality funds”, according to Wood. These funds are collected from the city business, not through taxes from residents.
ConWay’s festive decoration, as it is known today, started in 2019, when plastic jack-o-o-finens were hung from the trees along a main street. The festivities have continued to grow since.
“I think in 2019 this has really started as more than an event aimed at the community,” Wood said in an interview. But in the first few years of decoration, Wood said he saw an interest in the holidays spent in Conway expanded to a regional and then national scale.
Halloween decorations arrange the streets of cone in October. The holiday has become such a big event in the city of South Carolina that the name of the city is changing through a proclamation for the month of Halloween. TSN September 5, 2024
According to seasonal visits to the city, foot traffic has also grown over the years, especially around Halloween and Christmas.
In 2019, Konway welcomed just under 150,000 visitors in October. Over the last few years, the city has seen more than doubling this amount of tourists in Halloween in the month, with over 225,000 people in October 2024.
Graphics showing the total number of Conway visitors, SC in October from 2017 to 2024.
In December 2019, an average of 4,000 visitors strolled the streets of Konway every day, and about 8,000 visitors came to the city on average every weekend. By 2024, an average of more than 6,000 visitors came to town every day in December, with an average of almost 12,000 on average.
The graphics showing the average daily number of visitors to Conway, SC in December in both and the weekends from 2017 to 2024.
Wood said in an email that the decorations were a useful endeavor for the city because they give people more reasons to visit the city, attracting more business. Wood said in a later interview that the city was watching its hospitality and revenue funds from the city from the beginning of the decoration, which opens more opportunities, as these are the funds used to pay the decor.
She also said that the businesses had expressed that it was helpful for them as well.
In the last few years, Wood explained that the city has also started to “do” on other holidays, such as Valentine’s Day.
“We have found that with each new season our residents are excited for the next season of the holiday and planning of family events and vacations that will offer them additional activities,” she writes.
Before decorating for holidays, Wood said that the city did not bring much tourism. In addition to some people who make one -day excursions to walk on Riverwalk or families attending students from the University of Coast Carolina, Konway did not experience much external traffic.
While Wood said the purpose of the city was not to generate tourism, but rather to make it a better place to live in the residents, she noted that decorating the city led to a noticeable change in the number of visitors outside the city.
For Conway, the spirit of the community and the new streams of revenue generated by decoration are worth the cost, Wood said. The city has no plans to stop its festivities soon.