Winter 1999 - The history of Colorado, where the Rocky Mountains meet America’s Great Plains, is front and center stage for celebrations of the new millennium. To mark the new year, the legendary Hotel Jerome in Aspen, one of the state’s best known mountain resort towns, will offer guests the ultimate journey through time, an unforgettable evening priced at US$1,500 per couple.

Greeted by a three-piece band dressed in 1920’s attire, guests will enter the Hotel Jerome time tunnel and travel through decades of Colorado history in one extraordinary evening highlighted by a wealth of turn-of-the-century excitement. Built in 1889 at the height of Colorado’s silver boom, the Hotel Jerome was restored to its original Victorian splendor in 1985. Listed on the U.S. Register of Historic Places, the hotel has been an Aspen landmark for more than a century.

Elsewhere, Denver’s luxurious Brown Palace Hotel has put together a very special evening, “Henry C.  Brown Recalls A Moment in History,” where guests can expect to relive moments of the hotel’s past for an evening priced at US$1,999 per couple.

Throughout its 106-year history, the Brown Palace Hotel has played host to presidents, princesses, kings and queens—as well as their entourages. While most people associate the Brown Palace with the U.S.’s 34th President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who used the hotel as a summer headquarters during his administration from 1953 to 1961, the hotel has a long history of hosting other distinguished guests as well, including U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Bill Clinton.

Other Colorado events will sound a different note as the hands of the millennium clock cross midnight:

• Singer Neil Diamond will host the final Denver concert of the century at the brand new Pepsi Center, a US$165 million dollar facility that is replacing McNicholls Arena, which has been home to professional basketball and hockey. The new facility offers seating for 19,100, a 300-seat restaurant and 84 luxury suites.

• For theatre lovers, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” returns with a performance at the Temple Buell Theatre in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. This international phenomenon has dazzled standing-room-only audiences the world over.

• First Night Colorado provides a celebration of the Denver community through the arts. This family event, held at the Colorado History Museum, is for people of all ages and backgrounds from throughout metropolitan Denver.

Colorado’s Hospitality Industry

The hospitality industry in this western state is on an upward cycle, with Denver leading the way through economic growth. For the first six months of 1999, total room nights were up 5.3% metro-wide -- 13.4% in Denver alone. Competition is fierce as thousands of new hotel rooms hit the marketplace in the last couple of years.

Indeed, this kind of expansion in supply has led some of the older hotels to renovate their properties, including the Warwick Hotel, the Stapleton Plaza Hotel and the Teatro. Tax credits also have been offered as incentives to encourage the remodeling of older buildings, which will be needed to meet demands in Denver in the coming millennium.

(Courtney B. Wakefield is a marketing specialist in Arthur Andersen’s Denver office.) 

©Arthur Andersen