Heading into summer 2025, Breckenridge officials and the local tourism office set a goal to keep people in town after the mid-day Fourth of July parade and turn day visitors into overnight lodgers.
The call to action in part came from Breckenridge businesses. They said town seemingly cleared out the night of the Fourth of July the last few years. Despite beefing up evening entertainment by adding acts like a bicycle-focused circus, overnight lodging numbers were down compared to previous years, according to the Breckenridge Tourism Office.
With summer tourism numbers continuing on an unfavorable trend, the Breckenridge Tourism Office is changing course mid-season in hopes of boosting visitation. It is reallocating $300,000 of its budget to go toward marketing efforts, turning to the business community for suggestions and offering lodging promotion deals.
President Lucy Kay said numbers have been down throughout the summer, and the last several weeks have brought a drop of around 15% in lodging numbers year over year. In terms of Fourth of July numbers, director of operations Bill Wishowski said data indicates lodging numbers were down around 12% on July 4, and down 7% on July 5.
He said a reason as to why this Fourth of July had lower numbers could be because of the day of the week it landed on this year, a Friday. He said last year's holiday fell on a Thursday, and more people seemed to book a long weekend vacation because of it.
"I'd say business is soft across the mountain communities and resort communities, and it's still a bit of a hangover from that (COVID-19 pandemic) peak," Kay said, noting the town saw unprecedented visitation during and after the pandemic.
She said while this may be the case, Breckenridge's lodging numbers are down compared to its competitors. The town looks at its "competitive set," which is a group of similar mountain towns like Park City and Steamboat so it can keep tabs on visitation numbers in these areas and gauge overall tourism trends in the mountains.
She said the last several years, starting around the pandemic, Breckenridge was very busy, and the town and tourism office decided to take a step back from introducing initiatives, like adding new entertainment or recreation events, that would draw more visitors.
After a drop in numbers the first half of summer, the tourism office said it wants to refresh those efforts. Breckenridge Tourism Office, historically, hasn't focused on marketing the Front Range, and that's changing. It is now doing weekly outreach to the Front Range through its public relations firm, Handlebar PR.
The office also made a Breckenridge Wildflower Watch page on its GoBreck.com website. It is meant to give updates on which wildflowers are in bloom and where to best see them. The page is being advertised to people living on the Front Range.
The Breckenridge Tourism Office also plans to introduce a lodging sweepstakes opportunity where people that book within 10 days of their trip will go into a sweepstakes and have the opportunity to win something like $1,000 in Visa gift cards.
Kay said the office sought business community feedback on how to increase summer visitation, and many local owners thought more live music events could help.
She said officials are hopeful things will pick up in August with the Breckenridge Fine Arts Festival because this year's event has a new notable addition. Breckenridge will host the United States premiere of artist Daan Roosegaarde's SPARK exhibit. These firefly-inspired light shows have been done in major cities across the globe like Melbourne and London. The show will cost the town around $300,000, and officials were intending for it to draw national press.
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