It has felt like a great tourism year for Colorado. The meetings and events side of the business appears to be on the same upward trajectory. In a few days, I’ll be in Westminster for three days for our editorial advisory board meeting at the Butterfly Pavilion and the Colorado Governor’s Tourism Conference organized by the Colorado Tourism Office and held at The Westin Westminster, further adding to the encouraging totals recently reported by VISIT DENVER, The Convention & Visitors Bureau.
In the first three quarters of 2014, the Mile High City had already hosted 319,445 convention delegates, representing a 2 percent increase over the 312,536 delegates recorded by the same time period last year. With a strong fourth quarter of meetings scheduled, VISIT DENVER is predicting that 2014 should finish with a minimum of 422,000 delegates, significantly up over the previous best year of 2013 that brought 385,292 delegates and better than 2008, when the Democratic National Convention influenced the final tally of 378,863 delegates.
“We always knew 2014 would be a good convention year with large groups like SIA SnowSports, American Academy of Dermatology and Risk Insurance Management Society. Not only did we have a large number of meetings booked for Denver in 2014, but the conventions we had are all in industries that are seeing increases in convention attendance,” explains President & CEO Richard Scharf.
Consistent with other top tier cities, the business travel market has come back to Denver in 2014, which creates strong demand, primarily from Tuesday to Thursday. Denver is also experiencing a strong tourism year with blockbuster shows like the record-setting Chihuly exhibition at Denver Botanic Gardens. “Denver does best when all three mixes are performing well: the convention market, leisure travelers and the business traveler,” Scharf notes.
For the first three quarters of the year, Denver’s hotel room occupancy climbed to 78.2 percent versus 73.0 percent for the same time period last year, while average daily rate reached $124.44, up from $115.40 in 2013. This happened in spite of new hotel inventory coming into the market such as the 221-room Renaissance Denver Downtown City Center and the 119-room Crawford Hotel this year, and the 302-room, dual-branded Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites that opened last year.
Let me know how other Colorado destinations are faring by emailing beth.buehler@tigeroak.com.
