Granby – If you’re planning to get a hotel in Granby this July Fourth weekend, you might have trouble finding a place. The town, along with all of Grand County, is seeing one of the most profitable years for tourism in a long time.
Sharon Brenner, with Granby’s Chamber of Commerce, said lodging numbers are up countywide, and the busy summer season is just beginning.
Business suffered after 9/11, and the county has been struggling to recover ever since, she said.
“Tourism is what makes the county run. If it wasn’t for the ski areas, the fishing and tourists coming up to see Rocky Mountain National Park, there would be just little, teeny-tiny towns with no business,” she said.
Tourist visits, gauged by lodging-tax revenue, were up 20 percent in fourth-quarter 2004 over the same quarter a year earlier.
First-quarter 2005 numbers show the recovery continuing. They show $115,966 in lodging taxes – more than 15 percent greater than the $100,344 collected in the first quarter of 2004. And all signs point to a strong summer season.
Spring runoff is rapidly filling Granby Reservoir. Dalton Elliot, with the Grand Elk Marina, said all the slips are taken. He said the reservoir is about 20 feet shy of being full and rising about a foot a day.
“We don’t have the fire bans, we don’t have the drought. Other than gas prices, things are ready to attract the tourists,” Brenner said.
Tourism spiked in June 2004 after an area resident went on a well-publicized bulldozer rampage.
“There was lots more traffic for probably a good month,” Brenner said, “then it started to level out. The bulldozer put Granby on the map, so where we weren’t known nationwide, we are now.”
While tax revenues reflect a positive trend, Brenner said, individual businesses won’t feel the impact for some time.
Even so, spirits around town are rising right along with the water levels.
