Visit Estes Park is leaning into a partnership-driven strategy as it looks to grow tourism in ways that better serve local businesses and the broader Estes Valley community.
This month, the destination marketing and management organization announced two new formal partnerships, one with the Estes Arts District and another with the Estes Park Wedding Association. The agreements reflect how the organization’s new leadership sees its role: not just as a promoter of the community, but also as a steward of it.
“Coming into Estes Park, for me, there’s a real desire to enhance and strengthen current partnerships while also looking for new partnerships that really leverage resources,” said Sarah Leonard, new CEO of Visit Estes Park. “It’s the way smaller organizations and nonprofits have really been successful.”
Leonard, who officially began in the role Dec. 1, said that approach is rooted in what tourism officials call “destination stewardship,” a term that goes beyond marketing and asks how a community can balance visitor demand with resident needs, economic benefit, and cultural vitality.
“To me, destination stewardship embodies the idea that we should take an active role in being community stewards,” Leonard said. “It’s really taking care of your community as you’re sharing it with visitors and residents.”
The more substantial of the two new agreements seems to be the one between Visit Estes Park and the Estes Arts District, which creates a shared, full-time program director position focused on arts, culture, and creative economy initiatives. Under the one-year renewable memorandum of understanding, the two organizations will fund the position jointly, collaborate on grants and outreach, and work to better connect arts programming to visitors and locals.
“The Estes Arts District is sort of the lead employer for the position, and we are helping enhance that so that it could be more robust,” Leonard said. “There are so many overlapping efforts that we can collaborate on, such as gathering assets and promoting events related to the creative arts, as well as supporting projects and messaging.”
For the Estes Arts District, the partnership offers a chance to expand what had previously been a more limited staffing vision into a full-time position with a broader mandate. Lars Sage, co-chair of the Estes Arts District, said the idea emerged after Leonard met with arts district leaders and proposed a collaborative model that could benefit both organizations.
“We basically share equally the person,” Sage said. “For every dollar that EAD put up, VEP would put up a dollar as well, so we were able to come up with around $54,000 for a salary.”
Sage said the arts district hopes to begin hiring as soon as possible, ideally by early April, with the arts district leading the search in consultation with Leonard and its board. Beyond promotion, he said, the new position is intended to help the arts district organize a more unified local arts ecosystem.
“I think the primary success for me would be the comprehensive umbrella organization developing and getting all our arts organizations together to form a group,” Sage said. He added that a more coordinated arts calendar could help local groups avoid scheduling conflicts, promote one another more effectively, and create a clearer picture of what is happening across the valley for both residents and visitors.
That effort comes at a moment when Leonard sees broader momentum around arts and culture in Colorado, including heightened interest in the state’s creative economy.
“It’s a super exciting time for Estes Park and Northern Colorado and the state of Colorado around big events and the creative arts and film,” Leonard said. “To be in a premier mountain community with so much to offer, not only in nature and public land space but also with local businesses and great momentum around the creative industry, I think that is very exciting for Visit Estes Park and our partners.”
The second March partnership, with the Estes Park Wedding Association, is narrower in scope for now, but still tied to Leonard’s larger strategy of using collaboration to support local business sectors. Their memorandum of understanding focuses on sharing approved image and video assets, developing a common digital asset platform, and coordinating promotion at trade shows and industry events.
“Our initial partnership is to be able to share digital assets,” Leonard said. “That may not sound as sexy to some people, but having the right images, video, and marketing assets to help share your story is an important part of any destination.”
For Thomas Pemberton, president of the Estes Park Wedding Association, the idea grew out of both his marketing background and his interest in keeping more wedding-related spending circulating locally.
“The wedding industry isn’t faltering, especially when you consider booking is almost two years out with most of these venues,” Pemberton said. But he said he began asking what tools existed to help Visit Estes Park better promote that sector and realized the association could help create what he called a “hassle-free creative library” of strong local photography and other assets.
Pemberton, who became president of the association in October 2025, has also been trying to better quantify the size of the wedding economy in Estes Park. Based on modeling he shared, the local market includes an estimated 965 weddings annually across 12 venues, with about 96,500 attendees and roughly 32,166 overnight visitors. Factoring in venue costs, lodging, and related services, Pemberton estimated total direct wedding spending at more than $46 million.
That figure fits into a broader tourism economy that remains central to Estes Park. According to Visit Estes Park, visitors generated $510.8 million in direct travel spending in 2024, supported 3,419 local jobs, and produced $29 million in local tax revenue. The organization says tourism accounts for 82 percent of the town’s sales tax revenue and helps fund priorities such as workforce housing and child care.
Leonard said those numbers help explain why questions about growth in a destination like Estes Park must be framed carefully.
“I grew up in the industry thinking about managed growth,” she said. “It doesn’t always mean more visitors.”
Instead, Leonard said she is interested in sustainable growth, including attracting visitors during slower periods, increasing repeat visitation, and maintaining the kind of quality experience that benefits businesses without overwhelming the community.
“My goal is to foster the enhancement of the visitor industry in a way that meets what residents want,” she said.
She said that is one reason partnerships matter so much. Whether the focus is arts, weddings, or some future collaboration not yet identified, Leonard said the aim is to create economic, social, and cultural benefits at the same time.
“With both of them, I think we can create more awareness around our cultural arts sector and businesses and raise awareness for both residents and visitors,” Leonard said. “It’s supporting quality visitor experiences, and I think it’s, again, going back to one of your original questions, it’s being a steward of the brand and a steward of the community.”
In the months ahead, that philosophy will be tested less by slogans than by execution: whether a shared arts position can help unify local cultural groups, whether wedding marketing tools translate into stronger local business retention, and whether residents feel the visitor economy is working for them as much as it works for those passing through.
For now, Leonard said one thing has become clear in her first few months on the job: people care deeply about Estes Park, even when they disagree on what tourism should look like.
“Everyone has an opinion about how they feel about Estes Park and how they feel about the visitor industry, and they’re all valid opinions,” she said. “Even if people have different feedback, I get a true sense that people are passionate and love Estes Park.”