A Joint Budget Panel analyst has endorsed cutting the Colorado Tourism Office budget by 35 percent for the economic 2012-13 year, roiling tourism officials.

Al White, head of the Colorado Tourism Office, claimed cutting the state's tourism promoting funding by $5 million to $9.6 million won't just pinch visitation but tax revenue.

"Tourism funding is critical," White said. "For every buck we spend, we get about $7 back in state and local taxes. It's a great leveraged return on the dollar."

The analyst's Feb. 16 "figure setting recommendation" will be considered by the six-member, bipartisan panel on March Sixteen. The financial review board, which writes the annual appropriations bill that funds state operations, can adjust the analyst's recommendation.

"The council frequently takes the analyst's advice but they can make their own decision," declared White, who used to serve on the panel for 4 years.

The 2012-13 budget suggested by Gov. John Hickenlooper continues tourism funding at $14.6 million.

State funding for the tourism Office fell from $20 million in 2007 to $14.6 million in 2011 as the state faced a severe budget crisis. This year - thanks partly to reduced gaming revenues - the state's selling funds could fall to $9.6 million.

Back in the early 1990s, funding for tourism promotion was eliminated. From 1993 to 2k, the state spent nada to lure holiday-makers. By the late 1990s, the state had watched the number of overnight vacationers visiting Colorado drop by a third.

A decade after reviving tourism marketing efforts in 2k, the state logged a record 55.1 million visits in 2010, including a highest-ever 28.9 million overnight visitors. Those visitors spent $8.8 bill, another record for the state.

The state claims approximately 2.6 percent of the states tourism market, up from 1.8 p.c when it didn't spend any money on tourism selling.

Each tenth of a p.c is worth $450 million in business activity and about $40 million in local and state tax cash, White announced.

"I want our market share to grow to 3 percent," he said. "That will need extra funding and also means a further one-and-a-half billion in spending in the state and $160 million in tax cash. When we lose a third of our funding year-to-year and we lose Sixty p.c of our funding in four years, that's not how we stay competitive."

The promise of gigantic returns on tourism investment will hopefully sway the budget committee before it adopts the analyst's recommendation, White asserted.

Tourism boosters in Colorado say investment in holiday marketing pays massive dividends and they all point to Florida. Facing more than a $1 billion budget insufficiency, Florida's governor in 2010 almost doubled tourism spending and last month flesh pressers kept it that $35 million funding intact.