From Vision to Action: How Solimar Helped Colorado Build and Implement a Statewide Destination Stewardship Strategic Plan
Colorado’s tourism industry is one of the state’s most powerful economic engines — and one of its greatest opportunities for collective stewardship. In 2024, Colorado welcomed 95.4 million visitors, a 2.3% increase from 2023. Traveler spending reached $28.5 billion, supporting more than 188,000 jobs across the state and generating $1.9 billion in state and local tax revenue.
These figures demonstrate the continued strength of Colorado’s visitor economy. They also reinforce the need to manage tourism in a way that protects the landscapes, communities, cultures, and experiences that make Colorado such a sought-after destination. Rising visitation, climate change, congestion, resource pressures, and shifting community needs have made it clear that success in tourism must be measured by more than visitor volume and economic impact alone.
To help meet this moment, the Colorado Tourism Office (CTO) launched the Colorado Destination Stewardship Strategic Plan: Fiscal Year 2025–2035, a 10-year roadmap designed to advance a more sustainable, regenerative, and community-centered future for tourism in Colorado. Solimar International was honored to support the CTO in facilitating the development of the statewide plan and eight regional destination stewardship plans, guiding a comprehensive and inclusive stakeholder consultation process that reflected perspectives from across the state.
The Colorado Destination Stewardship Strategic Plan was built through an extensive engagement process that brought together residents, destination organizations, tourism businesses, government agencies, land managers, Tribal representatives, nonprofit partners, industry associations, and other stakeholders.
From July 2023 through June 2024, more than 1,000 stakeholders contributed more than 2,500 insights to shape the plan. Engagement included introductory meetings, stakeholder interviews, statewide and regional workshops, surveys, webinars, public presentations, and draft review periods.
The process began with 15 introductory meetings involving more than 396 tourism stakeholders, which helped identify 63 initial destination stewardship priorities. These priorities were then explored in greater depth through 200 individual interviews across the state. From there, Solimar and the planning team supported 16 statewide planning workshops with 442 participants, where stakeholders validated priorities, brainstormed solutions, and helped refine strategies. A statewide stakeholder survey later gathered input from 640 tourism stakeholders and community members.
Public review was also central to the process. In February 2024, the draft statewide strategy framework was shared publicly through webinars and a follow-up survey. Regional presentations in March and April engaged 381 individuals across Colorado’s eight travel regions to refine regional priorities. In April, the full draft statewide plan was posted for public comment, followed by draft regional plans in June.
This phased, participatory approach ensured the final plan was not simply a tourism strategy written for Colorado, but a stewardship roadmap shaped by Colorado’s communities.
Throughout the planning process, stakeholders were asked what success in destination stewardship would look like. Their responses informed a clear statewide vision:
Destination stewardship in Colorado is a success when:
This vision reflects the plan’s broader purpose: to balance the needs of residents, visitors, communities, natural resources, cultural heritage, and the tourism economy.
The final Colorado Destination Stewardship Strategic Plan includes 118 strategies organized into 14 sections across two major focus areas. It is designed to be used both as a comprehensive statewide roadmap and as a practical reference for specific topics, regions, and stakeholder groups.
The first focus area centers on the role of the CTO, destination management/marketing organizations, and tourism industry associations in advancing destination stewardship statewide. It begins with foundational strategies that tourism leaders should have in place before engaging travelers in stewardship messaging and action.
These foundational strategies include strengthening local coalitions, identifying internal stewardship resources, advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives, supporting green business practices, and helping local destinations and attractions integrate stewardship into their work.
The plan then organizes traveler-facing strategies around three phases of the traveler buying cycle:
Dreaming and Seeking Inspiration — integrating stewardship into destination marketing, storytelling, and brand positioning.
Planning and Booking — helping travelers make informed, responsible choices before arrival through tools, messaging, and recognition of sustainable businesses and destinations.
Experiencing the Destination — engaging visitors during their trip through Do Colorado Right messaging, land acknowledgments, signage, education, and opportunities to support local stewardship efforts.
The second focus area recognizes that many of Colorado’s stewardship priorities extend beyond the direct responsibility of tourism organizations alone. This section is structured around 10 shared tourism resources that are foundational to Colorado’s visitor economy and quality of life:
Communities; Outdoor Recreation; Wildlife and Biodiversity; Cultural Heritage; Arts and Creative Industries; Local Tourism Businesses and Organizations; Transportation; Agriculture, Food, and Liquid Arts; Tourism Workforce; and Climate.
For each section, the plan identifies goals, objectives, strategies, tactics, supporting resources, key performance indicators, and potential lead and supporting partners. This structure makes the plan actionable: each strategy is connected to implementation tools, partnership opportunities, and measures of progress.
In addition to the statewide plan, the planning process resulted in eight regional destination stewardship strategic plans for Colorado’s travel regions: Pioneering Plains, Canyons and Plains, Pikes Peak Wonders, Mystic San Luis Valley, Mountains and Mesas, Rockies Playground, The Great West, and Denver and Northern Colorado.
The regional plans were designed to help communities address their own challenges and opportunities while aligning with the statewide framework.
This regional approach was essential. Destination stewardship looks different in a rural community, a mountain resort town, an urban gateway, an agricultural region, or a public lands destination. By pairing statewide alignment with regional specificity, Colorado created a flexible framework that communities can adapt to their own needs.
A strategic plan is only as strong as its implementation. That is why Solimar’s work with Colorado has continued beyond the publication of the plan to support tools that help track progress over time.
One of the most important of these tools is the Colorado Destination Stewardship Dashboard, an interactive public dashboard designed to bring together dozens of indicators across four categories. The dashboard helps decision-makers, community leaders, tourism businesses, and residents understand how tourism is performing not only economically, but also socially, environmentally, and institutionally.
The dashboard is organized into four categories:
This fourth category is especially innovative. While most tourism measurement systems focus on outcomes such as spending, visitation, or environmental conditions, Colorado’s dashboard also tracks whether the institutions, programs, partnerships, and resources are in place to make destination stewardship possible.
This includes indicators such as destination stewardship budgets, stewardship messaging campaigns, tourism climate action strategies, CTO investment in destinations, Do Colorado Right participation, and tourism business engagement in sustainability programs.
Solimar provided technical advisory support for the dashboard framework and indicator selection, helping connect the strategic plan to a transparent measurement system that can support annual review, reporting, and adaptive management.
The dashboard is designed as a living tool. Its first iteration includes indicators that are currently available from reliable, regularly updated data sources. Over time, the CTO intends to add new indicators, strengthen data partnerships, and conduct an annual review to ensure the dashboard remains relevant as destination stewardship priorities evolve.
This “start modular, build over time” approach reflects the broader spirit of the Colorado Destination Stewardship Strategic Plan. Stewardship is not a one-time project; it is an ongoing commitment to collaboration, learning, adaptation, and shared responsibility.
For Solimar, the Colorado Destination Stewardship Strategic Plan represents the kind of work that defines the future of tourism planning: community-driven, data-informed, regionally responsive, and grounded in the belief that tourism can be a positive force for residents, visitors, businesses, and the environment alike.
As Colorado moves from planning to implementation, Solimar is proud to continue supporting the systems, partnerships, and measurement tools that will help turn the plan’s vision into lasting impact.
The Statewide and Regional Strategic plans along with the Dashboard of indicators can be found on www.ctwostewardship.com.