Council approves a modified planLast Wednesday, the Oro Valley Town Council approved a modified version of the Town’s Leisure Travel Destination Management Plan by a 6-1 vote. The approval excluded Section 5, “Big Ideas and Action Plans,” except for the Tohono Chul expansion concept. Council also added language stating that approving the plan does not authorize projects, capital spending, staffing increases, policy changes, or implementation actions without future council approval. In other words, any actions will have to come before council during a budget approval process.
What council "approved"
The plan is intended as a 10-year roadmap for leisure tourism in Oro Valley. It focuses on generating tourism tied to outdoor recreation, wellness, arts, culture, dining, sports, and community events , It does not focus on building business travel or convention activity. The plan recommends a regional events and festivals strategy to address summer seasonality, increasing sports tourism and evaluating additional sports facilities, activating Steam Pump Ranch as a cultural and culinary venue, creating themed visitor itineraries and trail guides, expanding boutique and wellness lodging options, and establishing resident tourism sentiment tracking and additional performance measures.
As part of its presentation, staff showed example first year scenarios for selected recommendations. A regional events and festivals strategy assumed 5,000 additional Tucson visitors spending $50 per day and 1,000 Phoenix visitors spending $100 per day, producing an estimated $325,000 in economic activity and about $4,000 in Town bed and sales taxes. A sports tourism example modeled a small regional market capture with visitors staying three days, producing an estimated $520,000 in economic activity and about $6,500 in Town taxes. Other examples included a Steam Pump Ranch strategy estimated at $150,000 in revenue activity and about $1,900 in Town taxes, and a culinary tourism scenario estimated at $400,000 in activity and about $10,000 in taxes.
The purpose of the Town’s tourism strategy is to attract additional visitors who spend money in Oro Valley, generating economic activity, supporting local businesses, and increasing Town tax revenues. As part of that effort, the Town recently reported estimated economic impacts of nine selected FY2025-26 tourism events. Staff discussed these at last week's Tourism Advisory Commission Meeting. The events ranged from major events such as the Legendary Women’s Cup and Tucson Marathon to smaller festivals and community events. Together, staff estimated that these events generated $3 million to $4 million in economic activity. LOVE translated those figures into approximate Town revenue impacts using Oro Valley tax rates and also analyzed the reported hotel room activity tied to several events. See the above panel for those calculations, including estimated bed and sales tax impacts, and for an explanation of how the Town says tourism event impacts are calculated.
The plan cost the town $150,000. It has gone through months of review involving staff, the Tourism Advisory Commission, and council discussions. Staff described the plan as a community-based framework shaped through research, stakeholder engagement, resident surveys, and tourism analysis intended to guide future tourism-related decisions.
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