AURORA | Aurora may not have a white sand beach, or a ski resort or many of the other attractions that come to mind when someone says “tourism.”
It doesn’t even have a Gaylord Rockies Hotel and Convention Center to help entice visitors — at least it won’t until next year.
But that doesn’t make the team at Visit Aurora any less enthusiastic when it comes to luring people to Colorado’s third-largest city.
Last year, the organization tasked with bringing tourists to Aurora helped book more than 100,000 room nights, bookings the agency says will pump more than $44 million into the Aurora economy.
Bruce Dalton, the group’s president and CEO, said when he and his staff pitch out-of-towners on Aurora, they don’t scramble for reasons why some of the city’s more than 50 hotels are the ideal spot for their convention or vacation.
“We are really a great destination for leisure travelers as well as conventioneers,” he said.
Since Dalton took the helm last year, the group has doubled in size with 10 employees today compared to five last spring. Just last month the group brought on Brian-Douglas Stanwood as a second group sales manager and tasked him with building on that base of meeting and convention business.
Stanwood has been in the hospitality business for almost two decades, including a stretch at Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs.
That experience in El Paso County will be helpful in Aurora, Stanwood said, because it presented some similarly unique challenges for promoting a place that might seem a little different from a typical tourist destination.
“You really had to learn the destination and what it had to offer, and to sell the destination as well as the facility itself,” he said.
With Stanley Marketplace thriving and a stable of hotels available, Stanwood said prospective customers are intrigued by what Aurora has to offer these days. And that’s a far cry from the run-of-the-mill suburb Aurora was once viewed as, Stanwood said.
Dalton agreed.
“For years, everybody just considered Aurora a sub of Denver,” he said.
And while the complexion of Aurora’s tourism scene is already far different than it was a decade ago, Dalton said that is going to change even more when the massive Gaylord project opens next year.
“It’s going to be exciting, it’s going to exceed everyone’s expectations every way possible,” he said.
Gaylord officials showed off the 1,500-room hotel’s progress late last year and said the project is on track for an early 2019 opening. Already, hotel officials say they have booked more than 600,000 room nights for the hotel.
At 2 million square feet — including 485,000 square feet of meting and convention space — the hotel and convention center is massive. It also includes a 175,000-square-foot exhibit hall with “elephant doors” big enough to drive semi trucks through and 10 Food and Beverage outlets totalling 1,344 seats. That includes a 24,000 square foot sports bar with 460 seats and a 75 foot long, 14 foot high LED screen. There will also be seven pools and water features, including an indoor and outdoor pool and lazy river.
Like the scope of the project, Dalton said Gaylord’s effect on Aurora will be massive.
The conventions that come to Gaylord — whether they are motorcycle enthusiasts or doctors or engineers — will mean thousands of visitors, he said, but also lots of attention on Aurora because of those visitors.
“It’s news because those people are going to come and they are going to have a story,” he said.
And, Dalton said, Gaylord will have a spill over effect, sparking more hotel business around it.
“There are going to be others that step right behind and follow Gaylord,” he said.