Ten tourism stars to be honored
At 2018 Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame dinner
Denver’s more than $5 billion tourism industry will honor some of the cultural facilities, events and organizations that helped lead Denver to another record-breaking tourism year in 2017. The awards ceremony will take place at the Denver & Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame dinner on Wednesday, March 14 at the Seawell Grand Ballroom at the Denver Performing Arts Complex.
The 19th annual gathering will also induct four people into the Tourism Hall of Fame: Stephen Bartolin, the 24-year president and current chairman of The Broadmoor; former Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown, the longest serving member of the Denver City Council until he was tenured out; and Gary DeFrange, the immediate past president of Winter Park Resort.
A special posthumous award will be presented to one of the most famous figures of Colorado’s hospitality industry, Barney Ford, an escaped slave who came to Colorado in the gold rush and struck it rich opening a series of restaurants and hotels.
The Tourism Hall of Fame Dinner is the premier annual event for Denver’s travel industry – which registered its best year ever in 2016 with 17.3 million overnight visitors, generating more than $5.3 billion in spending. The industry supports more than 57,000 jobs in the metro area.
The gala is a fund-raising event for the VISIT DENVER Foundation, which has awarded a total of $913,000 in scholarships to 332 Colorado students pursuing higher education in the fields of tourism and hospitality.
For ticket information, please contact Meagan Logan at mlogan@visitdenver.com or 303-571-9405.
