Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times

Grand Junction’s tourism sector continued to post gains in 2025 and into early 2026, with hotel-performance metrics outpacing state and national trends even as lodging-tax growth remained comparatively modest, according to Visit Grand Junction data and comments from the organization’s director.

Visit Grand Junction Director Elizabeth Fogarty said in an interview with The Business Times that January 2026 started on a positive note, with the portion of lodging tax collected for the organization rising 3.5 percent compared with January 2025. Hotel occupancy for the month was up 1.9 percent, average daily rate increased 2.6 percent, and revenue per available room rose 4.6 percent.

Those January figures follow a 2025 year in which Visit Grand Junction’s 4.25 percent share of the city’s lodging-tax collections increased 0.8 percent over 2024, while hotel occupancy rose 3.3 percent, average daily rate increased 1.8 percent, and revenue per available room  climbed 5.1 percent, according to information Fogarty provided.

Grand Junction’s hotel sector has continued to outperform broader benchmarks. Fogarty said Visit Grand Junction compares local hotel performance against three categories: Colorado excluding ski resorts; Colorado including ski resorts; and the United States. January 2026 marked the ninth consecutive month that Grand Junction hotel occupancy outpaced all three. Average daily rate has led those same categories for six consecutive months, and revenue per available room for nine.

The city also set annual hotel pricing records in 2025, according to the data Fogarty provided.

Fogarty said Visit Grand Junction has responded to the lodging supply and tax challenges by changing how it markets the community.

“We’ve shifted our marketing to increasing length of stay,” she said.

According to the organization, the average guest stay in Grand Junction eight years ago was about 1.8 nights. In 2025, that average had increased to 3.1 nights.

Fogarty said Visit Grand Junction also focused more heavily on weekday travel and on encouraging hotels to raise room rates when market conditions support it.

More hotels needed

Fogarty said Grand Junction is about 2,000 rooms short compared with similar markets and needs additional hotel development, though Visit Grand Junction does not recruit hotel projects. She said some activity could occur along the riverfront within the next one to two years.

That shortage has become more significant as the city has grown and housing pressures have spilled into the lodging market. Fogarty said two former hotels on Horizon Drive have converted into apartment-style housing, which may help meet local housing needs, but it also reduces traditional visitor lodging inventory.

Tax revenue hasn’t increased as much

While hotel occupancy rate grew 3.3 percent and revenue per available room rose 5.1 percent in 2025, the lodging-tax collections grew only 0.8 percent. Fogarty said the mismatch between stronger hotel metrics and slower lodging-tax growth is the result of what Visit Grand Junction calls “lodging cannibalization.”

“Lodging accommodations intended for short-term stays are instead being used for 30 days or more, rendering them nontaxable for both lodging tax and sales tax,” Fogarty said.

She said the issue began in mid-2024 and has become a drag on lodging-tax revenue even as rooms remain occupied.

“If an individual comes to town and stays 30 days or more, there’s no lodging tax collected and no sales tax collected,” Fogarty said during the interview.

She said those longer stays can include construction crews, medical specialists, university-related housing needs and people relocating to Grand Junction before finding permanent housing.

Local input went into the formula 

Fogarty said the city’s tourism growth also is tied to a broader brand strategy built with local input.

“When we did the brand strategy with the community, we asked them, ‘How do you want your home represented?’” she said. “That was a real shift for the community because they had never been asked that question.”

She identified several tourism pillars that continue to drive visitation, including arts, history and culture, downtown experiences, culinary and craft-beverage offerings, outdoor recreation and the area’s natural landscape.

Fogarty also pointed to recent national attention as part of the city’s tourism momentum. She said the New York Times recently published a “36 Hours in Grand Junction” feature after years of outreach from Visit Grand Junction. She described the feature as “the holy grail of tourism PR,” second only to Grand Junction’s inclusion on the New York Times’ “52 Places to Go” list in 2023.

Steady growth rather than volatile 

At the same time, Visit Grand Junction is emphasizing what Fogarty described as responsible destination management rather than unchecked growth. She said the organization has worked to spread visitors across more trails and attractions instead of concentrating traffic in the same places.

“Our goal is to increase visitation slowly,” she said, “so we’re still enhancing quality of life.”

The data paints a picture of a tourism market that is growing, but under different conditions than in earlier years. Before the cannibalization issue emerged, Visit Grand Junction’s lodging tax collections grew 13.6 percent in 2023 over 2022 and 9.4 percent in 2022 over 2021.