Visit Grand Junction

The monthly Advisory Board of Directors Meeting.

Story By: Julia Blanchette, Sacred Spaces Editor

Visit Grand Junction is an official department of the city that is run by an Advisory Board of Directors. This department is solely responsible for marketing Grand Junction and attracting tourism. The Grand Junction Board of Directors meeting, held on Tuesday, April 11th, was officially called to discuss department updates pertaining to lodging metrics, community events, and public relations. 

This is a recurring meeting held on the second Tuesday of each month. There are nine specified members of this board. Each official member on the board serves a three-year staggered term for the department. Elizabeth Fogarty holds the director position of Visit Grand Junction. 

Tourism is essential to the city and promotes economic stability within Grand Junction by generating access revenue. Hotel and guest lodging capacity impacts tourism. Fogarty presented a numerical data chart that contained statistics relevant to local lodging. 

Some of the terminology used in this meeting is vital to comprehending the collected data. Hotel metrics are numbers used to depict a hotel’s overall performance. Hotel average daily rate, referred to as hotel ADR, is the average price paid per hotel room. RevPAR is defined as the total revenue made per available hotel room.

Hotel metrics within Grand Junction tend to vary. From January 2023 to February 2023, Grand Junction hotel metrics underwent an increase. Occupancy in February 2023 increased by 19 percent in comparison to one month prior. 

While comparing Febuary 2023 to February 2022, the occupancy for 2023 was 52.7 percent, a 1.9 percent increase. 

“February 2023 occupancy is the highest occupancy for any month of February in Grand Junction’s lodging history,” Fogarty said. “Our occupancy broke a record, which is really good.” 

The ADR for February 2023 increased by 5.9 percent compared to the previous month. That translates to a $4.53 increase in ADR per hotel room. That places the Grand Junction ADR for February at $84.07, which is 0.1 percent below the ARD for February of 2022. 

“The ADR remained fairly flat compared to last year,” Fogarty said. “This is fairly good because we have seen some softening with ADR in the community which is a little discouraging.”  

Year-to-date data compares two months of hotel metric data to 2022. Year-to-date occupancy through the end of February 2023 is 48.2 percent which is a 2.3 percent increase compared to the year-to-date increase from last year. 

ADR from year to year is even at $81.89, with only a .001 percent increase. 

The RevPAR is $39.49, which is a 1.9 percent increase compared to year-to-date data. 

Hotel metrics can be compared to the metrics of the entire country. The hotel metrics of the United States are referred to as national metrics.

For the month of February, Grand Junction had an occupancy of 52.7 percent. That is 12.1 percent lower than the national occupancy of 60 percent. 

ADR for the month of February was $84.07 in Grand Junction, whereas the national ADR was $152.01. That is a 44.7 percent difference. That also places the Grand Junction RevPAR at 51.7 percent lower than the national RevPAR. 

“These large numerical differences between Grand Junction hotel metrics and national hotel metrics are to be expected,” Fogarty said. “The United States has giant cities like New York and Chicago which are not comparable in size to Grand Junction.” 

All of these statistics are highly relevant to the upkeep of tourist revenue. More revenue brought into the city means more economic benefits for the residents who reside within Grand Junction.