What is Placer.ai?

December 19, 2025

In the Workshop Meeting on Monday, December 8, when discussing the Summer Bandstand Concert Series, Placer.ai, a service that the City of Rehoboth Beach subscribes to, which provides reports based on cell phone location data, was brought up. When looking at the 2026 concert schedule, there has been a lot of discussion on gathering more data to better analyze the impact the concerts have on the City and the businesses, and whether an adjustment is necessary.

To provide more background on Placer.ai: Many cities, chambers, businesses, site-selectors, real estate professionals, tourism sites and national chains are using Placer.ai and other similar tools as a way to gather helpful information.

The City started using the service in March 2025 after the idea was brought to us by Rehoboth Beach Main Street. City officials looked at it and thought the information the service provides could be helpful to us and allow us to make more data-driven decisions.

For example, the City uses the data to help form decision-making or provide additional data/stats for things like press releases and social media. It helps us get a better understanding of attendance for large events and – for the Bandstand Summer Concert Series – make decisions that would impact those events. We’re able to see how many people come into town during specific timeframes, where people come in from, where they head after the concerts end – data like that gives us something substantial to work with.

You’ve seen some of this data. For example, we have shared some with the public in releases and social media posts. For example, our Sea Witch® “By the Numbers” post on Oct. 30 had data provided by Placer.ai reports (93.7K visitors over the weekend), in addition to stats provided to us by our streets department and police and DELDOT. In fact, in this issue of Lines, in our “2025 Year in Review,” we have also shared the “Busiest Days” stats that include data from Placer.ai. Crowd sizes are normally the main ones we share, as many of you do seem interested in those numbers.

An example of the data delivery provided by Placer.ai

We also partner with Rehoboth Beach Main Street to generate reports that help better understand the business environment in the City.

The City does not collect the data. Placer.ai does, by collecting location intelligence from mobile devices via third-party apps that have user permission to share location information. It combines this data with other sources such as public records, available demographic information, and surveys. The data collected and provided is aggregate data and not individual data, based on queries we generate. It is anonymous and contains no personally-identifying information.