With about seven miles of lights in the trees along Elkhorn Avenue coming down this week, it’s fair to say the holiday season is officially over in Estes Park.
Visit Estes Park will review expenditures, community sentiment, and the return on investment for the decorations and events sponsored during the holiday season.
With holiday lighting costing the Town of Estes Park and VEP nearly $300,000 each year, not including electricity, recently named VEP CEO Sarah Leonard will meet with Town staff this month to discuss holiday investments and returns.
The Town contributes $100,000 to the cost of light rental, installation, and takedown. VEP contributes another $116,000, along with $75,000 for storage, transport, assembly, and disassembly, for the 36-foot-tall, state-of-the-art digital LED tree it purchased for $150,000 in 2024.
The cost of event promotion is not included in the totals reported here.
“I want to look at everything. At what worked, what hasn’t, and how, we are going to approach things this next year,” Leonard said.
VEP pays to promote Town-sponsored holiday events, including the tree lighting ceremony, the Catch the Glow parade, a snowman scavenger hunt, the Sweet Stroll, and, new this past year, Slay the Games, a holiday game carnival.
Both VEP’s 2025 lodging tax receipts and Town sales tax receipts will not be reported by the Department of Revenue until sometime this week, and a breakout of the sector data will not be available until late in February.
However, VEP data for 2023 and 2024 showed a 14% increase in lodging tax. Year over year during that same period, data shows a two-to-three percent increase in visitation. The Town’s November sales tax report showed an increase of 28.8% increase in lodging tax collected.
The increase in lodging receipts is an accurate reflection of success, Leonard said.
“We care about assessing our return on investment, but one of Visit Estes Park’s core responsibilities is to generate economic activity and revenue for the benefit of the community. By doing that, one of our goals is to market to potential travelers, visitors outside of the community,” she said.
“If we can attract high-quality visitors who are spending money and generating sales and lodging tax, then we are able to support those investments, or continue to support those investments in childcare and affordable housing,” Leonard said.
Leonard said reviewing the holiday events would lead to a greater understanding of VEP’s “role in the community and special events, including the holiday time.”
“I want to partner with the Town to find out their information. It would be great to see if we could determine how much of that sales tax is contributed by visitor activity, and then really look at what our return on investment is so we can take care of that investment and not detract from the core,” Leonard said. “The reason why the Estes Park lodging tax district was established was to market to visitors, to create economic activity for the community, and the region.”
During the 1990s, the Town decided to keep the holiday lights up through mid-February, including the Presidents’ Day weekend, which is observed on the third Monday of the month. Dorla Eisenlauer, who served as an Estes Park Chamber Resort Association ambassador in the 1990s and as a Town Trustee in the early 2000s, was an advocate for keeping the lights on, arguing that they created a romantic atmosphere for visitors who came to Estes Park to celebrate Valentine’s Day.