Tourism Pays

The Importance of Tourism

• The Pikes Peak Region welcomed 25.6 million visitors in 2025
• These visitors spent a total of $3.1 billion
• Travel and tourism bring more than $8.5 million per day into the local economy
• Average length of stay for overnight visitors is 2.6 nights
• 23% of overnight visitors had a member of their travel party who required accessibility services (5% above the U.S. norm)
• Tourism is the 3rd largest employer in the Pikes Peak Region, providing more than 40,000 jobs
• In 2025, there were 11.2M overnight visitors, a 1.6% increase over 2024.
  • This increase is on track with the destination goal to attract more overnight visitors who contribute more to the local economy than day visitors.
• Seasonality breakdown of visitation was nearly identical to that of 2024.
  • 21% visited in winter (up from 20%)
  • 26% visited in spring (no change)
  • 31% visited in summer (up from 30%)
  • 23% visited in fall (down from 24%)

Cutting Tourism Promotional Spending is Risky

• When tourism promotional spending is cut, there is a loss of direct spending as well as a loss of jobs, reduced wages and reduced tax collections
• The impact of cutting tourism spending can be seen by studying the Colorado experience of 1993-1997, when the tourism promotion budget was reduced to zero
• The critical question is "how many lost visitors does it take to negate the savings of a reduced or eliminated promotional budget?"
• According to the Colorado study, the answer is less than 1%. It takes only a 1% reduction in visitation to completely negate the savings of reduced promotional spending
• For more information on the importance of tourism and our national economy, please visit TravelEffect.com