I will be writing next week about “misinformation” and “disinformation” in Pagosa Springs, related to proposed tax increases. I’m defining “misinformation” as an accidental (perhaps careless?) distribution of incorrect information. Happens all the time.
“Disinformation”, on the other hand, is the intentional distribution of lies, distortions, exaggerations, spin. This also happens all the time.
As mentioned yesterday in Part Two, the Pagosa Lodgers Association LLC has regularly criticized and questioned the work of the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board (PSATB) in public meetings over the past two years. The underlying reason for those attacks has never been clear to me, but it feels like something of a pissing contest — with Association members claiming to understand more about tourism marketing than the Tourism Board, without presenting any evidence of that superior knowledge.
In making this unverified claim, the Association has been consistently supported by County Commissioner John Ranson, who in serves on the Tourism Board representing Archuleta County.
During the presentation to the BOCC on Tuesday morning, by lodging owners Kelly Spence and John Harper, the ask was pretty clear. Archuleta County would re-direct $525,000 away from the Tourism Board and hand it over to fund a different — untried and untested — marketing effort directed by the privately-owned Pagosa Lodgers Association LLC.
After one year, the County would assess the progress and decide whether it worked or not. Reports would be delivered monthly.
That was the rough outline of the proposal. The benchmarks by which the BOCC would judge the Association’s well-funded effort were not presented. Exactly how would the BOCC measure the success of the Association effort?
Measurement of tourism marketing success has been a constant challenge in Pagosa Springs. In many tourism communities, the big hotels and motels share their occupancy rates and ‘revenues per available room’ with a centralized tracking organization such as CoStar, and the resulting amalgamated data helps lodgers and tourism organizations understand trends and make decisions about the best marketing moves.
But members of Pagosa Lodgers Association LLC have consistently refused to share their occupancy and revenue data with the Tourism Board, or with anyone else. So PSATB has been, in a sense, shooting in the dark as regards specific trends that might inform the Board’s marketing and advertising decisions.
Shooting in the dark, for over 15 years.
There’s another interesting aspect to the attacks on the Tourism Board coming from the Lodgers Association, and from Commissioner Ranson.
State law has prohibited Archuleta County from using in Lodging Tax for anything other than “marketing and advertising.” So the Tourism Board is expected to use the $500,000 in annual County revenue for only that purpose.
The $1 million coming from Town Lodging Tax each year is not, however, limited by state law, and the Tourism Board has regularly used some of the Town’s revenues to help fund events that presumably attract visitors to the community. Additionally, the Town revenue has been used to fund “tourism infrastructure” such as signage and — for example — the construction of the San Juan Overlook platform in downtown. The Tourism Board has also funded July 4th fireworks, and even a property purchase for future affordable housing.
Some of us assume that “tourism” can thrive only when employees can find housing, and that tourists will return to visit Pagosa again, when they’ve enjoyed some interesting events here.
A year ago, Colorado Tourism Office Director Tim Wolfe visited Pagosa and delivered a report on Colorado’s tourism industry, which has been struggling somewhat in terms of domestic visitation.
From a story by Ella Slade in the Pagosa Springs SUN, October 15, 2025:
Wolfe explained that, according to the STAR (Smith Travel Accommodations Report), an industry-standard hospitality performance report that the CTO collects annually, Pagosa Springs is a leader in overall hotel occupancy revenue for 2024.
“Colorado is down in overall occupancy and related revenue rates,” he continued, “But Pagosa Springs, along with Alamosa, is up 10 percent in occupancy points, which is leading the entire state in occupancy. So, congratulations to your entire community for your occupancy growth.”
He added the area is “far exceeding”regions across the entire state through August 2025 compared to 2024.
But as many of us know, tourism has impacts beyond “occupancy points.” It has impacts on the entire community.
Here again is the image I shared yesterday in Part Two, from the Colorado Tourism Office:
We note that, according to the Colorado Tourism Office (CTO), residents “don’t know about management efforts.”
Not only do they not know about these efforts, residents typically don’t know that tourism organizations these days are trying to “manage” tourism. There was a time when the job of a tourism board was simply to attract ever-greater numbers of tourists. But since the COVID experience, when communities in Colorado were overrun with visitors — in some cases, visitors with strange and different cultural values — tourism boards all across Colorado have taken on the task of making sure we don’t get too many tourists.
That is, they have tasked themselves with managing tourism.
Businesses also don’t know about these management efforts, according to CTO.
And some of the businesses that don’t know about the necessity to manage tourism apparently belong to the Pagosa Lodgers Association LLC. In the draft budget presented to the BOCC on Tuesday, we find no indication that any of the money would be spent managing tourism.
Some lodging owners see themselves as part of a community, and understand that too much of a good thing is not a good thing. It’s a balancing act.
Based on my attendance at numerous PSATB meetings, it appears to me that the Tourism Board understands the need for balance.
But some business owners can’t see past their own ‘bottom line’.