Anecdotes about the town’s tourism traffic being off this summer may not be as dire as some reports could indicate.
Now that the fall tourism season is in full swing, both the Town of Estes Park and Visit Estes Park have reviewed trends for the first half of the year, and data from both agencies generally reflect the same information.
Statistics compiled from reports about the first six months of the year, and information from both the Town and the area’s marketing arm, VEP, show much the same thing: highway traffic and total sales taxes collected have not declined.
Out-of-state visitation and visitor center foot traffic decreased from the same information collected in 2024. However, overall town sales tax income increased by about 1.5%.
Using data from the Colorado Transportation Department, the town reports that traffic arriving on both U.S. Highways 34 and 36 remained nearly even compared to 2024. However, the data may not be as accurate as those watching the numbers might like. That’s because the traffic counter on US 34 was deactivated from July 15 through 3, 2024, because the CDOT was in the midst of a resurfacing project at that time.
From January through June, CDOT reported 2.6 million cars drove into town, just 0.59% fewer than in 2024.
According to a recent report released by VEP, most of that traffic came from Colorado visitors. Data collected from Placer.ai, a location intelligence platform, shows that nearly 45% of visits from January through June were from Colorado residents. Placer.ai collects and analyzes geolocation data from mobile devices. The information it uses accounts for mobile phone numbers that originally were issued in other parts of the country.
Out-of-state visitors from Texas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, California, Kansas, Florida, Iowa, and Minnesota declined. Texas topped the list of reduced visits, declining 8.8%. Nebraska and Illinois visits were down a little over 3%.
Foot traffic through the visitor center was only off 1.69% through June. However, July counts were off nearly 5%.
Even though sales tax collections have remained fairly steady and are up 1.58% from 2024, they are 2.05% lower than budgeted. The Colorado Department of Revenue is expected to release July sales tax collections this week.
While sales tax collections from other business sectors, such as restaurants and grocery sales, were up, one of the largest decreases in business came from the lodging industry, where June receipts were down 10.41%. The decrease does not account for the high rate of late returns filed in 2024, and through June 2025, lodging receipts were off 2.49%.
That compares to VEP’s report, which showed lodging tax receipts to be 6.2% higher than in 2024.
VEP receives sales tax income from a much larger area than the Town because there are more facilities in the marketing district’s boundaries that also include unincorporated Larimer County.
During the first six months of the year, 6E funding totaled $2,246,165.
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