2026 Mid-Year Check-In: Record Numbers, a Shrinking Slice, and the Opportunity in Front of Us
The 2025 Colorado Travel Impacts report from Dean Runyan Associates, released alongside Longwoods International’s visitor research at the end of July, tells a story every CADMO member should know. The headline is worth celebrating: visitors spent a record $29.2 billion in Colorado in 2025, up 2% from 2024. Nearly 96.8 million person-trips to the state, generating $1.91 billion in state and local tax revenue, roughly $819 for every Colorado household and $10.5 billion in earnings for Colorado workers (OEDIT). By any absolute measure, Colorado remains one of America’s premier destinations, with a product travelers love and a visitor economy that has proven remarkably resilient through shifting traveler priorities, economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures carrying over from prior years of high inflation.
But the number that should anchor every board presentation and council conversation this fall isn’t the record, it’s the growth rate behind it. Colorado’s less than 2% growth in 2025 was less than half the 4.2% pace of the U.S. travel economy as a whole and near zero growth in Colorado the prior year. That gap, repeated year after year, is the story of where we stand as a state and the size of the opportunity ahead.
The Trend Since 2022: Records Every Year, Ground Lost Every Year
Colorado has set a new visitor spending record every year since the pandemic recovery. Here’s how that looks in sequence (Colorado Sun, 2023; ColoradoBiz; OEDIT 2024; OEDIT 2025):
Three years of records, totaling less than 3% cumulative growth, during a period when inflation alone ran well ahead of that. In real terms, Colorado’s visitor economy has been essentially flat for two years while the national pie kept expanding by more than 4% per year. Colorado was at a ten-year average of 4.3% a year growth for Colorado visitor spending. And for the first time in recent memory outside the pandemic, travel-supported employment actually declined about 1,160 fewer than 2024.
It isn’t all headwinds in the detail. Overnight outdoor recreation trips jumped 22% in 2025, the steepest annual increase in two decades, confirming that Colorado’s core product is exactly what today’s traveler wants. Business travel (down 11%) and softer day-trip spending did the damage. The demand for what we sell is growing; we’re just not capturing our share of it.
Market Share: The Pie Is Growing. Our Slice Is Not.
In 2019, Colorado captured 2.3% of U.S. travel spending. As of 2025, that share has slipped to about 1.8%, four consecutive years of share loss, even as our absolute numbers set records (OEDIT). Half a point doesn’t sound like much until you do the math: if Colorado still held its 2019 share, visitor spending would be roughly $8 billion higher every year. At the state’s current ratios, about six jobs per million dollars of visitor spending, and about 6.5 cents of state and local tax per visitor dollar, that’s on the order of 50,000 additional jobs and more than $500 million a year in tax revenue currently being left on the table. That is not a loss to mourn. It is a target to reclaim.
The Investment Gap Behind the Share Gap
Why is Colorado growing at half the national rate? The competitive set gives a clear answer. The Colorado Tourism Office’s promotion budget is $19.3 million for 2026, down $1 million from the prior year, and essentially unchanged for a decade (Colorado Sun). When you factor in inflation and buying power, Colorado’s state buying power is nearly half what it once was just a decade ago. Our state tourism marketing budget is now millions below Wyoming’s budget. Meanwhile, states that treated tourism as a growth investment are seeing the returns. West Virginia made tourism a funding priority beginning in 2017. Its direct traveler spending has since reached $6.6 billion, up 28% since 2019 compared with 12% nationally, while tourism’s total statewide economic impact now exceeds $9 billion (WV Press Association; WV Tourism). The competition isn’t just Utah anymore, it’s every state that has discovered what we’ve always known: tourism marketing pays.
When Colorado eliminated its state tourism-promotion budget in the 1990s, Longwoods International documented a major loss of summer travel market share and billions of dollars in foregone visitor spending before sustained funding was restored (Longwoods International). And the evidence that marketing works has only gotten stronger: last year's CTO Summer Magic campaign influenced nearly 1.4 million incremental trips, generated $2.6 billion in visitor spending and delivered an industry-leading return on investment, according to the CTO’s latest report. Add Tourism Economics’ finding, that for every $1M in visitor spending an average of $120,000 in state and local taxes is generated (Destinations International), and the case makes itself: the tool that closes the share gap is sitting right there, proven and underfunded.
The Opportunity Ahead
Here is the genuinely good news: the timing for Colorado to lean in has rarely been better. U.S. Travel forecasts national travel spending growth accelerating to 3% annually in 2027 and 2028, with international visitation, the longest-stay, highest-spend segment, rebounding 3.4% in 2026 after two down years (U.S. Travel Association). Canadian arrivals, one of Colorado’s top international markets, have been climbing for months. Outdoor recreation participation nationally has grown four straight years, and Colorado just posted its steepest increase in overnight outdoor trips in twenty years. The travelers are coming. The only question is which states will be in front of them when they choose.
Colorado is not in crisis, we are a resilient, beloved, record-setting destination with an anemic growth trajectory and a proven, underused remedy. For CADMO members, the mid-year assignment is clear: take these numbers into your fall budget conversations. Lead with the $819 per household and the 22% surge in outdoor trips. Be honest about the 1,160 lost jobs and four years of share erosion. Point to West Virginia and to our own 1993 history for what investment does. Pull your own county’s numbers from the Dean Runyan county dashboard so the story is local, not abstract. The pie is growing. Our slice is ours to win back and $8 billion a year says it’s worth the effort.