Visitors bureau seeks CTO matching grant and approves $46,600 Miles Partnership advertising contract

The Chaffee County Visitors Bureau (CCVB) on Aug. 19 sought board support to apply for a Colorado Tourism Office (CTO) matching marketing grant the bureau would use to purchase a location-intelligence platform and analytics to identify and target high-value visitors. Marketing director Scott Peterson told commissioners the platform would combine location data, attribution and spending dashboards to measure trip length, visitation frequency and spend; the bureau would pair that data with event-level economic impact analyses for several local events.

Grant and budget: Peterson said the CTO matching grant would be $49,000; the visitors bureau would commit $24,500 as the local match for a total project cost of $73,500. The board voted to support the application.

Advertising contract: Separately, the commissioners approved the county visitors bureau contracting for digital and print advertising with Miles Partnership and the Colorado Tourism Office placements for $46,600. Peterson laid out past campaign results on colorado.com, including millions of impressions, thousands of leads and referrals to local pages; he said the advertising package includes native placements, lead generation, a two-page display in the state vacation guide and a custom email.

Staff noted the visitors bureau would put a portion of funds toward contracting an analyst to produce monthly dashboards, quarterly reports and persona profiles, and that the intel platform work would require an RFP if the grant is awarded.

Why it matters: commissioners and the visitors-bureau director said better data would help the county target higher-value visitors, measure advertising effectiveness, and support more evidence-based marketing and infrastructure decisions. Peterson argued that attribution data would show whether advertising impressions translate into county visits and spending, which would help evaluate the return on advertising spend.

Next steps: staff will proceed with the CTO matching-grant application and, separately, execute the Miles Partnership advertising contract.