Funds will be used to attract more visitors, meetings and events to the area post-pandemic
Visit Loveland, the tourism division of the City of Loveland, Economic Development Corp., has been awarded $175,000 from the Colorado Tourism Office (CTO) through the Tourism Recovery Marketing Grant. The CTO announced the seven recipients of the grant. This one-time grant offered by the Colorado Tourism Office was funded through an EDA American Rescue Plan Travel, Tourism, and Outdoor Recreation State Grant, providing funding to eligible applicants to support the economic recovery of the travel and tourism industry in Colorado through the execution of tourism marketing and promotional campaigns.
The goal of this grant program is to support the economic recovery of the travel and tourism industry in the state and attract visitors to Colorado cities and towns that are still recovering from the pandemic.
“After record growth in 2019, our budget was decimated by the pandemic in early 2020,” said Cindy Mackin, CDME, visitors services manager for Visit Loveland. “We survived through creativity, marketing partnerships, in-kind sponsorships, and true grit. Two years later we’re still trying to recover from our losses. These grant dollars will allow us to seize this moment of increased demand and re-energize the visitor economy, not just in Loveland but all along the Front Range.”
This is the largest amount of funding that the CTO has awarded through a grant program, more than doubling the previous record high of $750,000 awarded last year through the Tourism Marketing Matching Grant. Providing direct support to industry partners allows destinations to market to audiences that lost market share during the pandemic such as meetings and events, group travel, off-season visitors, and international travelers.
“We’ll use these funds to revive and upgrade how we portray Visit Loveland to attract new guests and re-engage with prior visitors, ensuring tourism remains a viable economic engine in Loveland,” said Mackin. “With a campaign themed around ‘love,’ and focused on data recovery, creative production, and marketing execution, we’ll target four primary audiences with a cohesive multidisciplinary approach.”
Each application was evaluated on the strength of a tourism recovery-focused marketing campaign, demonstrated recovery need, measurable tourism impact, quality of budget and timeline, and implementation capacity. Eligible projects include city, county, or regional tourism marketing and promotional campaigns overseen by nonprofit organizations promoting tourist destinations, Colorado cities or other political subdivisions of the state, economic development district organizations, and Indian tribes.
Other organizations that received this funding include:
- City of La Junta
- Colorado Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau
- Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau
- Fort Collins Convention & Visitors Bureau
- Logan County
- Visit Aurora
For more information on the program, please visit the official program page at https://oedit.colorado.gov/tourism-recovery-marketing-grant.