Hotel guests in Colorado will no longer see 100% of the funds they pay into county lodging taxes used for marketing efforts telling them to return, thanks to a bill signed into law Thursday, March 31, in Edwards.
Those marketing efforts aren’t as necessary if the tourism industry is facing larger problems serving the guests who are already here, Gov. Jared Polis said in a speech explaining why he feels the new bill is important.
“If the tourism community, and the industry, needs housing because they need workers to be able to power the tourism industry, that should be an allowable use of funds, too,” Polis said.
Polis credited Rep. Dylan Roberts, a Democrat who lives in Avon, for his work on the bill, saying Eagle County, is an example of a place where lodging tax funds would be better spent on housing than marketing.
“That’s exactly the situation we have in Eagle County,” Polis said. “Our recreation economy, our tourism economy, depends on housing.”
