Where do our visitors come from? Why do they come here and how much do they spend?
Each year, Visit DURANGO, aka The Durango Area Tourism Office, goes through a lengthy process to determine the answers to these questions as a basis for deciding where to direct our marketing dollars.
The Colorado Tourism Office also hires Longwoods International each year to study Colorado tourism, to answer these and many other tourism industry-related questions.
Their most recent study, Colorado Travel Year 2017, came out in June of this year. Although it discusses and draws many conclusions as to the sources, motivations and trends in Colorado tourism, we here in Durango can benefit from these statewide trends even though we represent a relatively small and remote part of our great state.
After all, most visitors come to see and experience all that the Rocky Mountains have to offer. Even though many come to the Front Range under the mistaken impression that it is the Rockies, they soon learn that neither Denver, Fort Collins or Boulder are actually in the mountains.
They also discover something they did not expect: Lots of traffic. Lots of it.
Hence, many travelers to Colorado quickly learn that the true, remote and natural mountain feeling is found outside the so-called Front Range, and begin searching for that unique Rocky Mountain experience, including some fine food, comfort and warm lodging along the way.
This could be the primary reason that the main source of visitors to Durango.org is Colorado.com, the state of Colorado’s official website.
That is, out-of-state travelers begin thinking “Colorado” when beginning their search for a mountain experience but rarely end there. They soon discover that the cities they are most familiar with, such as Boulder or Denver, are bustling, culturally rich areas, but are not the Rocky Mountains they were looking for.
How is Colorado tourism doing compared to other states? Colorado maintained its first-place ranking among the 50 states for overnight ski trips with a 21.1 percent share in 2017. This was up from a 18.7 percent share in 2016.
The marketable trip segments with the highest per-capita spending in 2017 were people on ski trips, who spent $1,248 per person, followed by people on combined business-leisure trips ($502), touring vacationers ($486), special event ($422) and city visitors ($421). The top out-of-state markets for overnight Colorado vacations were California, Texas and Florida, followed by Illinois, Arizona, New York, Kansas, New Mexico and Wyoming.
And here is a real surprising finding: The top urban areas that yielded vacationers to Colorado in 2017 were Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Los Angeles, New York City, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Chicago and Dallas/Ft. Worth. Some of these cities came in ahead of the expected Phoenix and Houston visitors.
Durango’s actual visitor profile probably favors Albuquerque, Phoenix and Dallas/Ft. Worth over Los Angeles or New York City, since our drive market exceeds our fly-in market. These visitors comprise a large segment of the drive markets from the South, either looking for relief from the heat in the summer or a skiing experience in the winter.
In that regard, Durango directly competes with our neighbors in Pagosa Springs, Telluride and Aspen for that mountain getaway experience these visitors seek.
In my next column, I will discuss how we both compete and cooperate with those locations.
Contact Durango Area Tourism Office Executive Director Frank Lockwood at frank@durango.org.
