Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times 

Visit Grand Junction is using a cutting-edge data-dashboard system to track visitor behavior, monitor tourism trends and more precisely target potential travelers as it works to grow visitation in a measured way.

The organization relies on an extensive network of dashboards and data sources to guide decisions, moving beyond traditional advertising approaches and guesswork into a deeply analytical, real-time strategy.

Through March 2026, the data reflects that growth, as the city has outperformed Colorado and the United States. Grand Junction’s 4.25 percent lodging-tax collections were up 8.1 percent year to date compared with the same period in 2025. Hotel occupancy increased 6.1 percent, average daily rate rose 5.5 percent, and revenue per available room climbed 12.4 percent.

Looking at a 12-month rolling period from April 2025 through March 2026, lodging-tax collections increased 2.7 percent, occupancy rose 4.8 percent, average daily rate increased 2.2 percent, and revenue per available room grew 6.8 percent compared with the previous 12-month period.

“We’ve got really good momentum in tourism,” Visit Grand Junction Executive Director Elizabeth Fogerty said. “Despite the state kind of having some challenges, we’re not just eking ahead of the state. The state’s in the negative, and we’re in the positive, and by a fairly large amount.”

Tracking tourism in real time

At the center of that performance is a system of 235 dashboards fed by 172 data sources that continue to grow. Those sources include private data such as Google Analytics, public data from sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Federal Aviation Administration, and purchased datasets such as hotel and flight information.

The dashboards allow Visit Grand Junction to track tourism performance daily, rather than relying only on monthly or annual reports.

“We’re looking at it daily,” Fogerty said. “If we don’t see the increase, then we know to start adjusting things.”

That approach allows the organization to test strategies, monitor results and quickly shift marketing efforts when needed.

The data also informs how Visit Grand Junction defines a visitor. To avoid inflating numbers, the organization only counts people who travel at least 50 miles to Mesa County, stay for at least four hours and do not visit more than three times in a month.

“We distrust our data more than we trust it, and that’s a really good strategy,” Fogerty said.

Finding unexpected markets

That approach has helped identify unexpected origin markets.

Fogerty said Albuquerque, N.M., emerged several years ago as a consistent source of visitors, even though it was not initially on the organization’s radar.

“That’s where the amazing thing with this data is,” she said. “We’re now paying attention to a city we never would have, because it wouldn’t have shown up if we weren’t tracking the origin market.”

The dashboards allow staff to break down visitor data by city, income level, travel habits, time of year and length of stay, giving a detailed picture of who is coming to Grand Junction and why.

That information helps determine where to focus marketing efforts with responsible and efficient use of taxpayer dollars, particularly given budget limitations.

“If we had an unlimited budget, we would just market to all cities,” Fogerty said. “But we don’t, so we have to work within that.”

Building a team around data

Visit Grand Junction has built a team of specialists focused on analyzing and applying data, reflecting a shift from traditional destination marketing toward a more technical, data-driven approach.

Daniel Short, a business analyst with Visit Grand Junction, used his laptop computer to demonstrate the dashboards, walking through how multiple data sources are layered together to form a clearer picture of visitor behavior.

He said the dashboards also allow the team to track how visitors interact with the organization’s website after clicking on ads, adding another layer to understanding behavior.

“Since that Albuquerque example, with attribution, we want to see where they access on our webpage,” Short said. “We can see that, so we look at what they’re consuming.”

Fogerty said the data used by the organization is anonymized and grouped into behavioral categories rather than tied to specific individuals. She said the organization receives aggregated information, not personal identities, allowing staff to analyze trends without tracking a specific person.

Targeting visitors more precisely

Visit Grand Junction uses the data to target specific groups of travelers based on behavior and interests, such as outdoor recreationists, food enthusiasts or artists.

Ads are deployed to selected audiences and compared against similar groups that do not receive the ads. That allows the organization to measure whether marketing directly influenced visitation.

“We can prove that our ad caused a visit,” Fogerty said.

Once someone clicks on an ad, Visit Grand Junction tracks how they interact with its website. Visitors are directed to relevant pages, such as events or activities, rather than a homepage, and their browsing behavior helps inform future marketing.

If a user clicks on an arts-related ad but spends more time on restaurant content, future ads may shift toward culinary experiences.

“We’re watching a behavior and trying to match it,” Fogerty said.

The organization also uses a third-party attribution partner to verify results, in addition to reports from its advertising vendors.

“We would rather have a third-party attribution partner that does not deploy ads monitoring all of it,” Fogerty said.

Adjusting to changing conditions and responsibility

The dashboard system also allows Visit Grand Junction to respond quickly to external factors such as weather, gas prices and broader travel trends.

“We are really agile,” Fogerty said. “We don’t put an ad out for the season and hope it works.”

The goal is not just to increase visitation, but to shape it responsibly. A current focus for Visit Grand Junction is encouraging weekday travel, longer stays and spending across lodging, retail, restaurants and activities.

That approach is intended to increase hotel occupancy during the week and avoid the overcrowding seen in other Colorado destinations.

“We don’t want overtourism,” Fogerty said. “We are proactive, not reactive.”

Fogerty said the use of data has changed how tourism marketing is evaluated, allowing Visit Grand Junction to demonstrate results more clearly.

“For a long time, marketing was ‘spray and pray,’” she said. “Now we can actually show what’s working.”