What Visit Denver’s $219 Advertising Return Measures—and What Businesses Still Need

A Colorado hotel, attraction or restaurant considering a tourism campaign faces a specific measurement question: can a destination-wide advertising return help set its own budget target? Visit Denver’s reported $219 in incremental visitor spending per advertising dollar offers a useful example to examine. Its applicability depends on what the return includes and whose outcome it measures.

In a May 21, 2026 release, Visit Denver attributed an estimated 3.6 million incremental trips and $1.6 billion in incremental spending to its spring/summer 2025 advertising campaign, citing a separate Longwoods International study. These are reported campaign estimates, rather than independently verified transaction totals. The release provides a starting point for evaluating the measurement, while leaving important questions for a business-level comparison.

Keep the unit of return visible

Visit Denver reports two ratios: $219 in incremental visitor spending and $25 in incremental state and local taxes for each advertising dollar. Each answers a different question. Neither identifies the profit earned by an individual business, and they should not be added into a combined return.

For an operator, the useful next question is how much incremental revenue, if any, can be connected to its own business. The destination spending estimate does not assign a share to a particular hotel or restaurant. Treating it as a business revenue target would require additional evidence about where that spending went.

A proposed business-level evaluation should therefore define its own outcome before borrowing the destination benchmark. Specify whether the objective is incremental bookings, revenue or contribution after the costs of serving additional customers. Keep that outcome separate from the broader destination measure.

Ask what the advertising dollar includes

The Denver release describes spending per dollar spent in advertising without providing an itemized cost definition. It does not resolve whether that denominator includes creative production, agency fees, research, staff costs or partner contributions.

That omission limits comparison with an operator’s fully costed marketing budget. Before putting the published ratio beside an internal campaign result, request the cost schedule and reconcile the categories. If one calculation includes only advertising placement and another includes all campaign expenses, label the difference rather than presenting the ratios as equivalent.

The same caution applies to precision. Request unrounded spending and cost figures before trying to reconstruct the reported return. The public release alone does not provide enough detail for independent reproduction.

Examine the no-advertising baseline

The most consequential word in the result is incremental. Longwoods says its advertising research estimates trips that would not have occurred without promotion, using controls for other travel influences, including the economy, weather and prices.

That description identifies the intended measurement. It does not establish how successfully the Denver study isolated the campaign’s effect. The vendor’s public overview does not supply Denver-specific sample sizes, fieldwork dates, weighting, uncertainty intervals or comparison-group construction. Readers should not assume that advertising was randomly withheld from a control group.

Limited public detail does not establish a defective study. Longwoods also says its research has sometimes produced zero-return findings. Both statements belong in their proper category: vendor descriptions of its approach, rather than independent validation of this campaign’s estimate.

Visit Denver’s annual visitor study also cannot fill the baseline gap. The release presents the annual visitor findings and advertising-return findings as separate research exercises. Total visitation describes observed activity; it does not disclose how many trips would have occurred without the campaign.

Build the request before setting the target

For a Colorado operator evaluating this benchmark, a focused documentation request should cover:

• The exact campaign dates, geographic scope and definition of an incremental trip.
• The no-advertising baseline and how the comparison group was constructed.
• Sample sizes, fieldwork timing, weighting and uncertainty around the estimates.
• Included advertising costs and the underlying unrounded figures.
• Evidence connecting destination-wide spending to the operator’s own incremental revenue.

The Denver example supports a useful discussion about advertising measurement. Adopting its ratio as a business target requires a further step: aligning the outcome, costs and baseline with the decision that business actually needs to make.