Letter: Steamboat should fund nonprofits instead of destination management and marketing
The Steamboat Chamber of Commerce would like our City Council to give them $975,000 for destination management and marketing. Really?
First, let’s talk about destinations management. Those of us that live here do it every day with friends and visitors and the visitors we meet in our different activities. Then there’s too many nonprofits to list that are already doing it as well.
Yes, we are a tourist town and we love our tourists and our tourists love us, and they already know about us. Lodging income was down, probably because visitors are staying in Airbnbs. Our sales tax collections were up, and if you went downtown this summer, it appeared tourists were definitely here.
It would be better for City Council to give money to the nonprofits that bring tourists here to play golf, bike, hike and play tennis and pickleball. The Steamboat Tennis and Pickleball Center is currently trying to raise funds to complete the second phase of its major expansion, which will give us a world-class facility that will add to the number of tourists that are already coming here to play pickleball, the fastest growing sport in the world.
The bottom line is the chamber needs to be fiscally responsible for themselves, as some council members have said in the past. Our current City Council members need to tell them the time is now.
Elaine Dermody
Steamboat Springs
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