Will this mean opportunities for Buyers before the 26-27 ski season?

Colorado’s tourism engine is still running — but the pace has clearly slowed. After a lackluster ski season that hit resort visitation hard, on the heels of a soft summer across the state’s tourist-dependent mountain towns, the usual response from destination marketers would be to double down on big promotional pushes. Instead, more than two dozen Colorado communities have gone the opposite direction: voters in these towns have approved raising lodging taxes and steering that new revenue away from tourism advertising and toward local priorities like housing, road maintenance, and public safety.
Industry veterans are noticing the shift. Dave Santucci, whose firm Mission2Market promotes travel to dozens of Colorado destinations, described the current climate as showing a number of warning signs, while stressing that the state isn’t in crisis — just experiencing sluggish growth.
The numbers back that up. Annual research from Longwoods International and Dean Runyan Associates — firms that have tracked Colorado tourism since the early 1990s — shows travel-related employment actually dipped in 2025, a modest but unusual reversal after years of steady gains. At the same time, earnings for tourism-dependent businesses and their employees still grew, topping $10 billion and rising slightly faster than the prior year. But that growth rate is well below the average annual pace the industry has posted since the mid-2010s, and the last two years now rank among the slowest for earnings growth in a decade.
Why this matters for buyers and owners
For anyone watching the Western Slope real estate market, this is a useful signal rather than a red flag. Mountain-town economies built around visitor spending are showing early signs of maturation — strong in absolute terms, but no longer accelerating the way they did a decade ago. That’s exactly why communities are diversifying their tax revenue toward infrastructure and workforce housing now, while the underlying economy is still healthy enough to support the transition.
For property owners, this points to markets that are becoming less dependent on tourism swings and more focused on building durable, year-round communities — a trend that has historically supported long-term property values even when short-term visitation numbers soften. It’s one more data point reinforcing what we’ve been tracking all season: mountain real estate keeps proving more resilient than the ski conditions or the headlines around them.
Source: The Colorado Sun, “Colorado sees another record year for tourism, despite slowing growth in spending and visitation”

give us a call. The market is changing daily as summer starts to wind down…..

Where the Best buys are now!!