A dip in local business eight months of the year in 2024 led to an overall 3.12% drop in sales tax revenue for Estes Park during the last calendar year, according to data released earlier this month by Sharla Beesley, grant coordinator for the town.
Despite the overall annual total decrease, Beesley noted that some industry sectors showed increases in economic activity in December after accounting for payments not yet received by some businesses. That led her to observe increased business occurring for restaurants, retail operations, and utilities during December.
While the town’s receipts for lodging activity reflected an annual decrease of 5.72% from 2023, tax receipts data for lodging throughout the Estes Park Marketing District, operating as Visit Estes Park, which includes properties outside the town limits, reflected an upswing in overnight stays, clocking in with an annual increase of 3% over 2023. Marketing district tax receipts were 13.2% higher in December 2024 than in December 2023.
Mike Zumbaugh, interim CEO and finance director of VEP, said that an increase in business would have been greater had outstanding delinquent amounts from October and December been received.
“I was surprised at the difference in the amount of our tax receipts for lodging when compared to the town’s,” he said, “but our boundaries are significantly different.” He also stated that the marketing district includes additional lodging properties located outside the town limits, which would account for the variance.
Zumbaugh attributes increases in overall December tax collections can, at least partially, to VEP’s strong promotion of the holiday season with multiple “Catch the Glow” activities. Placer AI data collected during the December event period validates that data.
Cindy Mackin, chief strategy officer for VEP, directed the holiday season research program using a system known as geofencing, which creates virtual geographic boundaries around an area using GPS and allows researchers to determine how many individuals attend events or how many people are in a specific area during a specified time period.
“We had a 143% increase in visitors in 2024 compared to 2023” during the holiday season, Mackin said.
Bond Park was a primary area for collecting data. Both sides of Elkhorn Avenue from the Water Wheel east to the intersection of U.S. 34 and U.S. 36 also were used to tabulate visitation. During December counts along that route showed 202,000 visits by 144,000 visitors.
Visitation spikes showing the highest visitation counts were the Catch the Glow parade, Sweet Stroll, the Snowman Festival, and the day the Stanley Hotel hosted a performance of scenes from the Nutcracker Suite.
Beesley’s report showed that lodging receipts provide 30% of the total sales tax revenue collected by the town. Restaurant receipts account for 24% of revenue while taxes on retail sales contribute 20% to the town’s general fund. At 12%, grocery sales fill out the top four categories of town sales tax receipts. Other tax categories include construction, professional, utilities, recreation, and automotive sales.
In total, the town received $17,714,392 in sales tax income in 2024. An additional $4,428,597 that was collected in 2024 sales tax represents a voter-approved 1% increase in sales tax to fund street maintenance, stormwater management, trails expansion, wildfire mitigation and powerline wildfire mitigation.
During 2024 VEP collected a total of $3,601,194 for its general fund through a 2% lodging tax charged to those who stay 30 days or less in short term lodging facilities including motels, hotels, campgrounds, and vacation homes.
Another $627,805 in collections went to VEP for collecting and handling accounting related to the voter-approved 3.5% in 6E short-term lodging taxes dedicated to workforce housing opportunities managed by the Estes Park Housing Authority and the town-directed childcare options. In all, the Town received $5,650,243 for those two programs.