Photo: Local lodging owners John Harper and Kelly Spence address the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners on September 22, 2026.
No one expected Pagosa Springs to be overrun with tourists in 2021, following the generally negative impacts on global tourism when the COVID crisis arrived in 2020.
But we might have predicted it, when we saw that the Lodging Tax revenues in Pagosa Springs were higher in 2020 than in 2019, in spite of the COVID debacle.
The reasons for the stampede were easy to guess. People didn’t want to fly in airplanes, and didn’t particularly want to visit crowded destinations. Pagosa Springs could be easily accessed by automobile, and it wasn’t going to be that crowded… even though, at the height of the COVID crush, we found ourselves waiting 45 minutes to get a table at most any restaurant in town.
One thing that was not a reason for the influx in 2021 and 2022: excessive marketing by the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board and VisitPagosaSprings.com. In fact, the local tourism marketing campaigns stopped encouraging people to visit Pagosa during those two summer seasons, and focused entirely on promoting the ‘shoulder seasons’.
Statewide, 20% of Colorado residents felt that tourism was negatively impacting their quality of life. “Greatly diminishes” was the phrase used by the Colorado Tourism Office.
I suspect the percentage of frustrated residents was higher than 20% in Pagosa Springs in 2021 and 2022. Maybe much higher.
Over the past two years, the prime reasons for feeling annoyed in Pagosa Springs have changed somewhat. Highway reconstruction. A flooding San Juan River, followed by an historic drought. A continuing housing crisis. Gas prices. Health insurance premiums going up. Tax increases.
Excessive tourism has seemed like a minor annoyance, in comparison.
So the number of people concerned about Tuesday’s proposal to the Board of County Commissioners, coming from the privately-owned Pagosa Lodgers Association LLC, may have been minimal.
That proposal, as outlined by Association members Kelly Spence and John Harper, would have the BOCC re-direct all of the County Lodging Tax — about $525,000 — away from the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board and VisitPagosaSprings.com… and hand it over to a separate board dominated by the Association.
Association member John Harper:
“Give us one year to show you what this program can do, and then you decide whether to continue or not…”
This proposal might seem somewhat ill-timed, considering that the BOCC signed an agreement with the Town government, in June, to continue joint funding of the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board.
Nevertheless, Commissioner John Ranson, who has been encouraging this type of transition for the past 18 months, spoke in support of the proposal.
Commissioner Warren Brown seemed interested in hearing more details.
Commissioner Veronica Medina was quite obviously opposed to the idea.
“I know this is a conversation that’s been going on for a long time. And I feel like it’s very unfortunate, because here we have two organizations working against each other… and I was really hoping that once [the Lodging Association] had a member appointed to the Tourism Board, things would get better, and a conversation could be had.
“But it seems like the disagreement has continued, and maybe without the opportunity to really listen to what’s really going on.”
I know what Commissioner Medina means by “working against each other”, but based on my attendance at dozens of Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board meetings over the past couple of years, I haven’t seen the Tourism Board “working against” the Lodgers Association.
Meanwhile, I have definitely seen the Lodgers Association attacking the Tourism Board on a regular basis. The reason for those attacks has never been clear to me.
Commissioner Medina:
“As I see it, this money is not really going to be going to the whole community, but it’s going to be going to one organization that’s really focused on ‘heads in beds’. Right?
“We have a bigger tourism market than just people staying the night [in motels].”
Commissioner Medina conceded that encouraging overnight stays was “absolutely: important.
“But the BOCC just went through a very rigorous rewrite of the [Memorandum of Understanding with the Town government] and it was stated very clearly that the BOCC didn’t want any of the [County Lodging Tax revenues] to be spent on personnel. That the money would be spend only on advertising and marketing.
“So [County revenue] is not spent on employees.
“But, according to your numbers, $218,490 is going to be spent on fees and employees. So that’s half the budget.
“And to sit there and ask to ‘give it one year’… You’re business people. You know you need more than one year to prove anything…”
At this point, Commissioner Medina was interrupted by Kelly Spence, who tried to explain why the Association proposal mentions a ‘one year’ trial period, and that — contrary to the Power Point slide show we had just watched — the Association actually wants a ‘three year’ trial period.
I attended the planning meetings back in 2007, when the Town first started collecting its 4.9% Lodging Tax. It was obvious that the Town Tourism Committee had a huge learning curve ahead of them. The way the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board now handles $1.5 million in revenues is quite different from how the money was spent back in those early years. And the number of additional grants acquired by the Tourism Board from various state agencies, to match locally-funded expenditures, is also quite different from those early years.
I’ve not seen any evidence, over the past two years, that a group like the Pagosa Lodgers Association LLC would have more success than the Tourism Board in obtaining those tourism grants.
Commissioner Medina:
“Every time there’s been question from the Association about the [Tourism Board] budget, or about how the money is spent… It seems to me very clear how the money has been spent. They have a proven track record… We’ve seen our tourism numbers go up.
“Pagosa Springs was recently featured in Forbes magazine… And that’s just one thing… That’s a big deal. And that’s just one thing recently…
“And then — and I’m kind of shocked — to say the Chamber is going to charge $52,500 for their services, to manage the money?
“That’s quite a chunk of money…”
Read Part Three… tomorrow…