The search for a new CEO of Visit Estes Park has been put on pause according to a statement released this morning to the Estes Valley Voice by Sean Jurgens, chair of the VEP board which met Thursday afternoon and went into a closed executive session.
According to Jergins, after returning to an open board meeting, the VEP board voted to pause the contract with SearchWide Global while a third-party investigation is completed.
“We understand that it is the Board’s responsibility to do everything possible to produce the best CEO for VEP through a fair and transparent process. At this point, the Board feels that a pause in the search and an independent investigation is the appropriate course of action to ensure the Board can determine next steps with the best available information,” wrote Jurgens.
Jurgens did not explain the nature of the investigation.
SearchWide Global is an executive search firm headquartered in St. Paul, Minn. The VEP Board voted in September to pay the firm $50,000 to lead the employment search for a new CEO after the departure of Kara Franker who left VEP to take the position of president and CEO for Visit Florida Keys, the destination management body for the Monroe County Tourist Development Council in Key West, Fla.
Two candidates who were interviewed for the VEP CEO position are VEP’s Community Engagement Director Cindy Mackin, who was hired by VEP last April, and Candace Carr Strauss, the vice president of marketing and communications for the Montana Chamber of Commerce in Bozeman, Mont.
What is VEP and what does it do?
VEP is a special marketing district established by local voters in 2009 to advertise, market and promote tourism in Estes Park.
The Colorado Tourism Board was created in 1983 to promote tourism, one of the state’s most powerful economic engines which generates incomes and tax revenues that support local infrastructure and services.
The CTB was funded by a 0.1% tax on travel-related products and services. The tax was due to sunset in 1988 but the Colorado legislature instead increased the tax to 0.2% and extended it for five more years.
By 1992, Colorado was the leading state for summer resort vacations when voters decided to abolish the tourism tax that funded the state’s tourism board. It was thought that everybody knew how great Colorado was so why spend dollars to invite tourists to come. For several years, Colorado was the only state without an official tourism office.
However, within two years, the state experienced a 30% decline in tourism and by the end of the 1990s, the loss snowballed to some $2.4 billion annually in tourism revenue.
The decline in tourism income had a ripple effect on other sectors of the economy and was felt statewide. In 2000, the state’s new Colorado Tourism Office was opened with a budget of only $5 million to rebuild a multibillion-dollar industry.
Research by Longwoods International, a travel and tourism consultancy, showed that even a small investment in tourism marketing had positive results, for every dollar spent on marketing there was a $15 return in just tax revenue alone.
But industry insiders knew that just because Colorado had amazing scenery and ranked fifth as a “dream destination,” without marketing money and an advertising campaign other destinations were winning, and Colorado was losing billions of tourist dollars.
In response, the state increased its tourism marketing budget in 2006 to $19 million. The following year 28 million visitors came to the Centennial state and spent $9.8 billion.
In 2009, Estes Valley voters approved a measure to establish Visit Estes Park, a local marketing district, and to collect a 2% lodging tax on stays in hotels and short-term rental properties. VEP’s mission is to advertise, market, and promote tourism in the area.
Over the past 15 years, VEP has worked to build brand awareness of Estes Park as a premier mountain destination community which competes with not only Aspen, Vail, and other Colorado mountain towns for tourist dollars, but other regional and national vacation destinations.
In 2022, voters approved an increase in the lodging tax to 5.5%. The additional revenue, which generates some $5 million annually, is earmarked to fund the development of workforce housing and childcare for the local community.
This past year, there were more than 5.5 million individual visits to Estes Park which generates more than 85% of local tax revenues.
A decision by the VEP board on the hiring decision for a new CEO is not expected until an independent investigation is conducted, a process which could take up to 60 days.
“We will provide an update as soon as possible,” Jurgens wrote in his statement to the Estes Valley Voice.
Thanks for this explanation of how VEP was established.