AURORA — The city has created a new destination marketing organization and hired someone to oversee it, in hopes of becoming a bigger player in luring corporate outings and other tourists and their money.
Aurora has unveiled “Visit Aurora” and hired Gary Wheat, the former executive director of the Longmont Area Visitors Association, to be its president.
The goal of the group is to market the city as a destination for tourists, corporations, hobby conventions and more.
“Identifying and showcasing Aurora’s strengths and positives, that’s our role,” Wheat said, “to show the outside world what a great place it is.”
Of course, driving Visit Aurora is a desire to increase revenue generated from tourist dollars. So far this year, Aurora’s lodgers tax has generated $3.86 million. Last year, it was $3.9 million. The tax reflects only hotel stays and doesn’t count money that visitors spend eating and shopping in the city.
Aurora is nationally known for attracting youth and adult recreational sporting events, such as the Colorado Fireworks fast-pitch softball tournaments, which draw upward of 175 teams a year and generate more than $6 million into city coffers.
But now the city wants to take advantage of other areas. Visit Aurora plans to promote its military and aerospace industries, as well as its fledgling East End Arts District and, of course, its burgeoning medical industry.
“We really have not tapped into all these major industries that exist,” said city spokeswoman Kim Stuart, who helped spearhead the Visit Aurora effort.
If the Anschutz Medical Campus is the Mayo Clinic of the West, as some have called it, then the city can expect to reap some bigtime cash when development around it is completed.
The clinic in Rochester, Minn., has numerous hotels and restaurants near it, attracting 1.3 million visitors a year, according to Kevin Hougen, president of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce. That’s more than Vail Resorts logs in a year, he said.
The medical campus in Aurora features the University of Colorado Hospital, Children’s Hospital, a growing bioscience park and, in a few years, a new Veterans Hospital that will serve the entire Rocky Mountain West.
The economy has slowed development around the campus, located on the former Fitzsimons Army base.
But the Springhill Suites by Marriott hotel, expected to open sometime next year across Colfax Avenue from the campus, is evidence that things are changing. Plans for that site also call for another hotel with up to 300 rooms and a 30,000- square-foot conference center.
“What’s taken Rochester 150 years to build we’ve done in 20 years,” said Hougen, who is on the board of directors for Visit Aurora. “We have an unbelievable opportunity.”
The city dissolved its main promotional vehicle, the Visitors Promotion Advisory Board, which was just that, an advisory board.
Visit Aurora, an independent nonprofit organization, will be staffed and charged with bringing in more tax dollars.
It will use about $550,000 from the lodgers tax next year to do just that.
Wheat said he wants to create a tourist identity for Aurora, one that will complement Denver, the ski industry and the entire state.
“People we will be marketing to in the outside world, they often don’t see city lines,” Wheat said. “They look at the experience. When people come to our state and our city, we all win.”
In his first few months, Wheat plans to study what’s worked for Aurora and what hasn’t. For example, he plans to meet with people in the East End Arts District, which hasn’t met expectations, to come up with a plan to draw more visitors.
Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer, who sits on the Visit Aurora board, said the city is in a unique position to take advantage of what’s happening now and in the future.
“This reflects Aurora’s development as a community and brings in out-of-town money for Aurora businesses,” Tauer said.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
