Smart urban policy benefits more than just residents. When done correctly, it can fuel business performance across entire industries, including hospitality. The City of Denver, host of this year’s Hospitality Show at the Colorado Convention Center, is a prime example.
In recent years, Denver has taken a data-driven approach to revitalization, pairing public safety initiatives with targeted investment and tourism marketing. Those efforts have helped reshape the city’s downtown and, vicariously, its hospitality performance.
That intersection between civic policy and hotel profitability was the focus of “Smarter Cities, Stronger Hotels,” a conference panel with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, Walter Isenberg, co-founder and CEO of Sage Hospitality Group, and Rosanna Maietta, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association. The discussion examined how decisions on everything from homelessness and policing to infrastructure and visitor experience can directly influence the very factors that matter to hoteliers: performance, guest sentiment and investment appeal.
As Maietta noted in her opening remarks, the relationship between civic vitality and hotel performance is symbiotic. It has to be. There are very few thriving hotel markets in down-and-out cities. At the same time, it’s hard for a city to really shine if its hospitality base is…less than hospitable.
“Cities and hotels go hand in hand,” she said. “When a downtown center is vibrant and full of energy, hotels thrive – and when our industry is thriving, we give that energy right back to the community.”
Public Policy as a Performance Driver
Denver has made some major turnarounds as of late, particularly in public safety, homelessness reduction and tourism investment, but they didn’t happen by chance. Instead, Mayor Johnston’s administration tackled some of the city’s most visible challenges head-on.
“If you were here two years ago, you would have seen a city with the third or fourth worst homeless problem in the country,” he said. “At that point, we had about 1,000 tents in the middle of our city center, closing down businesses, hospitals, churches, you name it.”
Denver set a target to become the first city that would end street homelessness, which Johnston admitted was a tall order at the time.
“But two years in, we’ve now closed every, single encampment in the city,” he continued. “We’ve reduced homelessness by almost 50 percent – the largest reduction of street homelessness of any city in American history. That's really important progress. It means we have sidewalks open, and people can walk down them, and you can go to a restaurant and sit outside.”
Safety was another major focus. Johnston noted the city’s hospitality and business communities, including Isenberg, played crucial roles in shaping that effort. This included the launch of Denver’s first dedicated downtown police unit, which deployed officers on foot, bike, motorcycle and horseback to improve visibility and response times across the city’s core.
“The idea is a lot more visibility, a lot more presence,” Johnston said. “I describe downtown like the blue phone on your college campus. Every 100 yards you walk, you'll be able to find some official who is there to help keep you safe. And the results for us have been dramatic.”
Denver’s homicide rate fell by 58 percent in the past year, marking the steepest decline among the nation’s 100 largest cities.
“For us, these are all signs we're heading in the right direction,” Johnston added.
His ongoing goal is that people feel comfortable enough to go for a run at 8 p.m., or to have their mother walk back to her hotel alone after a night at the theater.
“That’s what we're after – a city that is safe and vibrant,” he continued. “We think we have amazing assets in our hotel and restaurant community that already draw people. We just want them to make sure they love it when they get here.”
That connection between city safety and visitor satisfaction isn’t lost on local operators. Isenberg has seen Denver’s shift firsthand via Sage Hospitality’s downtown portfolio, which includes Union Station, the Rally Hotel and the Maven at Dairy Block.
“What's really powerful is that the public sector leadership recognizes that spending money to market our city comes back multiple fold,” Isenberg said. “How we have spent our lodgers’ tax and how the city has supported hospitality…have been tremendous changes for us in a very positive way.”
Public-Private Collaboration Fuels the Comeback
Of course, Denver’s rebound didn’t come from policy alone. Panelists acknowledged it took a willingness by both city leadership and the private sector to align priorities, share accountability and view hospitality as an essential part of the city’s economic infrastructure. In other words, to act like true partners.
For Johnston, this alignment has been intentional.
“We are unapologetically pro-business as an administration and unapologetically pro-growth,” he said. “For us to be able to create jobs and drive the economy, we have to be clear about that…We want this to be the best place in the country to do business. I lean on folks like Walter [Isenberg] to help us inform all of the strategies to do that.”
That collaboration shows up in tangible ways: a safer downtown, a cleaner streetscape and a more consistent pipeline of visitors. It’s also visible in the city’s tourism marketing and outreach, which is funded through its lodgers’ tax and guided by Visit Denver. Rather than pulling back during economic volatility, Johnston noted city leaders and private operators both doubled down on destination marketing and placemaking to maintain appeal and traveler demand.
Speaking of betting big, Denver voters approved a $550 million municipal bond initiative earlier this year that reallocates funding from lower downtown to upper downtown to convert and modernize the area’s aging office stock. Isenberg, for one, is excited.
“The mayor and his team are deploying that to revitalize the upper part of downtown with the historic office buildings,” he said. “That’s going to be a game changer over the coming years – the largest investment in any city center in the country.”
The move underscores how civic and private efforts intersect to keep a city’s core vibrant. It also shows how the industry benefits when that partnership is active and informed. That’s why Isenberg believes it’s prudent for hospitality players to understand and engage with local politics.
“Spend a little time to show them your business, educate them about what you're doing, the taxes you're contributing and the employment you’re creating – that matters,” he said. “Who your city council is, your state legislator, your state senator – that’s really where you can make a big difference.”