“Business is down.” “Business is up.” “There’s not as much traffic as in the past.”
Those are the reports filtering through the community as the peak summer season ends and the busy fall tourism months are just around the corner. As the six-month mark through the year has passed, there’s no single answer.
“It is a more complicated answer than you might expect,” said Scott Applegate, Bank of Estes Park CEO and president, describing business trends he’s seen through the first seven months of the year.
“Most businesses are saying they are up modestly over 2024, but still down significantly from 2022,” Applegate said this week. “There is, of course, a range – I would say maybe 15 to 20% are saying that they are not above 2024, and that maybe 15 to 20% are saying that they are significantly over 2024. That is the current status,” he said.
“Overall,” he added, “our prediction is that 2025 will be better than 2024, but still below 2022. We predict 10 to 15% of businesses in town may fall short of 2024 levels.”
Using a broad spectrum of data, it’s clear that reports on the state of the community’s tourism season, so far, are as mixed as the data.
Traffic into Estes Park via U.S. 34 and U.S. 36 is down about 7%. Visitor counts at the Estes Park Visitor Center are nearly identical to those seen in 2024, with 430 more people dropping by that facility. Visitation to Rocky Mountain National Park is up less than 1%.
Through June, total lodging sales tax revenues, including 6E funding, for Visit Estes Park have increased 5.8% over 2024, when collections through June totaled $3,705,683. Collections this year have been $3,922,318, and 6E collections for workforce housing and childcare have totaled $2,246,165.
However, the increase in the VEP year-to-date overall sales receipts compares to a decrease of 4.6% in June receipts.
While Visit Estes Park’s lodging revenue is collected from a much wider area than the town limits, the town showed a slight increase in total year-to-date revenues through June. Midway through the year, total town tax collections totaled $2,814,019.
While the full six-month sector breakout from the town won’t be available until later this month, the town’s total receipts are up 1.58% over 2024. Sector and delinquency reports, which add context to the sales tax numbers, are unavailable until the third week of the month.
The slight increase in town sales tax receipts was despite a 20-day worker strike at Safeway that began on Sunday, June 15 and ended on Sunday, July 5.
Other markers in the tourism trade are also minimal. Visits to Rocky Mountain National Park are nearly the same as in 2024, and through July, 430 more people had stopped at the Estes Park Visitor Center than last year during the same time.
The local reports are similar to those of other tourism-centric communities.
Some summer Colorado resorts are reporting stagnant visitation, which had been predicted by the state’s tourism officials who warned of a softening tourism market last year as vacationer traffic into the state ebbed.
According to information in an Aug. 4 story in the Colorado Sun, the most recent tourism reports from the Colorado Tourism Office showed no growth in overnight stays in 2024.