The best place to begin a story is at the beginning.
Over the past 11 years, I have served our community as business development manager for the city of Durango. Before that, I had a long, wonderful career in the Colorado tourism industry. Now, I have circled back to tourism, and have the privilege to represent and promote the many tourism attractions and amenities of Durango, La Plata County and Southwest Colorado. As they say, “Somebody has to do it.”
I’ll be using this new column, “A Take on Tourism,” to keep you updated on important tourism trends, where our marketing investment is going, and how we’re doing against our competition.
First off, what’s a DATO? The Durango Area Tourism Office (DATO pronounced like the philosopher Plato), is the tourism-marketing vendor selected by La Plata County and city of Durango as the responsible administrator of the lodgers tax. The tax is paid at checkout by the overnight lodging guest at the rate of 1.9 percent in the county and 2 percent in the city. This method of generating revenue for tourism marketing is the industry standard in the hospitality business. Essentially, the cost of tourism promotion is paid for by the tourist.
The lodgers tax was adopted at the current rate nearly 30 years ago, and by industry competitive standard could be increased without harm to Durango’s reputation as a “good value” vacation. Increases in marketing costs, tough competition, new technology and many opportunities present the need to remain competitive.
As an independent organization, DATO is governed by a board of 11 volunteer directors all of whom represent a different tourism sector. This structure is modeled after the state’s Colorado Tourism Office and provides fair and balanced representation of the 500-plus tourism businesses in our area.
DATO’s main area of responsibility is the planning and execution of destination-marketing programs meant to attract travelers to our region on a year-round basis. The methods used include an interactive website, digital campaigning, public relations, traditional advertising, social media, direct sales to the travel trade and distribution of travel-planning materials. Another responsibility of DATO is to provide visitor information (maps, directions, recommendations) and itinerary building (activities, day trips, reservations) to travelers once they have arrived. Last year, DATO helped 102,000 visitors at the Durango Welcome Center at 802 Main Ave.
The DATO tourism staff is made up of three full-time and four part-time professionals. The Visitor Information group varies in size according to seasons and traffic counts. Together, the staff has more than 100 years of marketing, public relations and hospitality experience.
By the numbers, city lodgers tax collections are up 12.3 percent through July. The Welcome Center has seen 72,015 visitors through August, with the month of August being up a hefty 18.9 percent.
Right now we’re working on final preparation of the 2015 marketing plan and operating budget.
Stay tuned.
director@durango.org. Bob Kunkel is executive director of the Durango Area Tourism Office.
