Summer Arrives, and With it Tourists

By Amy Brouillette, 6-22-05

Today marks summer’s official start, and with it, a season that brings an annual stampede of tourists through Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West. Proof Americans remain captivated by the region—its natural beauty and its Wild West cowboy ideal—the annual rush west each summer brings millions of visitors, and billions of dollars, into the Rockies and beyond. In exchange for the open-house tour of its natural and cultural goods, Western economies get back billions in revenue, around $120 billion region-wide each year, according to recent study by the Western States Tourism Policy Council. So vital is this annual cash injection, tourism ranks third among the region’s top industries, a key source of revenue that fuels Western economies.

Colorado’s is anchored more to its influx of summer visitors than it is to its winter ones: While skiers spend more money, there are less of them, accounting for only small fraction, a fifth of the state’s annual tourist draw. More than a third all leisure trips to Colorado occur in summer, according to a new study commissioned by the state's tourist board, yet that season had limped along over the past decade or so after voters in 1993 repealed an infinitesimal tourism (0.2 percent) sales tax on tourism-related goods and services as part of that year’s TABOR reforms. The vote cut out an $11.2 million source of annual revenue, money the state used to help pitch itself to summer visitors (the ski industry, under the wing of Colorado Ski Country, manages its own promotions). According to a Denver Post report yesterday, Colorado’s share of the tourism market dropped by 30 percent over that decade, and annual tourism spending plummeted by $2.4 billion.

In 2002, Gov. Owens doubled state tourism funds to $5.5 million, reserved entirely for resuscitating summer tourism, a move that saw immediate results: tourism that next year brought in an extra billion dollars, $7.1 billion in 2003. Tourist officials here are optimistic for similar returns from its visitors this season, thanks to the state’s revved-up pr efforts marketing Colorado’s natural bounty, and of course, to mother nature herself. This year’s wet spring that has rivers raging statewide is a boon for Colorado’s still-wobbly rafting industry, crippled by drought in 2002. That, along with a rash of wildfires, a flailing economy and post-9/11 woes crushed tourism that year (here and everywhere), which has been on a slow climb uphill ever since.

A good indication the state’s summer tourism is indeed on the mend, hotel occupancy and room rates are on the rise—occupancy rates for May 2004 rose 2.2 percent from the year before, to 56.1 percent, and room rates increased by $7.11, to $91.57, the Denver Post reports. Even with soaring gas prices that could keep the RV crowd at bay, state tourist officials anticipate a high tourist draw this season, at least on par with last year's rush. While a general annoyance to locals, who complain of crowded roads and restaurants and throngs of outsiders cluttering up backwoods trails and campsites, it's a relatively minor hassle to endure relative to the hefty economic boost—and it is, after all, how Colorado and the West increasingly earns their keep. [End of article]