Unfavorable tourism data trends prompted the Breckenridge Tourism Office to consider summer 2025 an "anomaly," so much so the office doesn't even plan to use it as a base comparison for future years.
Breckenridge Tourism Office president Lucy Kay said the office can't identify why summer visitation stats dropped around 14% at an Aug. 12 Breckenridge Town Council meeting. Prior reports from the Breckenridge Tourism Office indicated summer overnight visitation was down around 14-15%. She said not knowing the reason behind a dip in tourism is unusual, and July is looking particularly down based on preliminary data. Data indicated lodging numbers were down around 12% on July 4.
She said July currently has the office's "undivided attention" as it contemplates if changes need to occur for next year.
Kay said, at face value, the drop may appear significant, especially considering Breckenridge is behind its competitive destination set, but noted the town is in a unique position. She said 2021 brought unsustainable tourism volumes to Breckenridge, and it continued to have strong visitation compared to much of its competitive set, which includes towns such as Park City and Steamboat Springs, in the following years.
"They're coming up from a lower position, we're coming down from a higher position," she said, explaining still Breckenridge has more booked nights than its competitive set, it just doesn't have more nights booked than it did last year.
Breckenridge Tourism Office director of operations Bill Wishowski used Park City's data, which is considered perhaps the most comparable destination to Breckenridge because it has a similar number of available lodging rooms, to demonstrate Kay's point. He said where Park City had around 75,600 nights booked as of Aug. 3, Breckenridge had around 109,000 nights booked.
"It's not so bad in the macro sense, but the reality is, down is down," Kay said.
The Breckenridge Tourism Office focuses mostly on summer and fall tourism, leaving winter tourism marketing mostly to Breckenridge Ski Resort. Kay said the office typically shoots for 3-4% growth each year with a focus on marketing to out-of-state visitors, but that changed this year.
Once tourism data began indicating a downtrend, the tourism office turned its attention to marketing to Colorado's Front Range, something it typically does not need to do. Additionally, Kay said, there is also a drop in visitation from the other most popular visitor demographic outside of Coloradans: Texans.
The Breckenridge Tourism Office reallocated $300,000 of its budget to bolster marketing efforts. Wishowski said the effort drove more traffic to the office's website, but did not translate to more booked room nights.
Kay said while tourism is down, she won't yet be asking to beef up funding for next year. She said the office looks to boost the economic vitality of Breckenridge, but it also looks to ensure quality of life for residents. Because of this, she told officials she would like to wait for the results of the resident survey to come in early fall to see what community members want to see before making decisions for next year.
"I'm curious about the welcoming part of your message," Mayor Kelly Owens said. "That's obviously something that we aspire to move towards, although we feel like we've struggled with that over the last year."
Kay said tourists and visitors in surveys have largely indicated they feel Breckenridge is welcoming, but added it is something the office will continue to work on to improve.
Council member Todd Rankin wondered if introducing more events could help solve the problem.
Kay said before the office introduces more events, it wants the results of the resident-sentiment survey.
"After this summer, that temperature may be changing, but I'd like that confirmed in the data," Kay said,"So that's part of the reason we'd like to wait for this last part of our budget."
She said one focus the office its board had discussed was honing in on the culinary experiences of Breckenridge, either through marketing or hosting food-centric events, given the notoriety Rootstalk's owner Matt Vawter helped bring to the town after winning a James Beard award. Additionally, she said there's been recommendations to further highlight the historical aspect of Breckenridge to boost tourism as well.
No official decisions were made by Breckenridge Town Council during this discussion.
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