This dashboard is maintained as a shared resource for the Stowe business community — a way to track tourism and retail activity using data the State of Vermont already collects, updated monthly. It combines two series: Meals & Rooms tax receipts (lodging, dining, and alcohol sales) and Sales & Use tax receipts from retail (excluding grocery and wholesale). Because every lodging, restaurant, and retail business in town files these taxes monthly, the aggregated totals are a reliable proxy for visitor spending — no survey or estimate required.
All figures are shown two ways: as originally collected (nominal) and adjusted for inflation to constant January 2019 dollars (real), using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI-U. The real figures are the ones that matter for judging whether Stowe’s economy is actually growing, since nominal totals rise with inflation even when underlying activity is flat — that’s why the stat boxes above lead with real growth. Use the toggle above to switch every chart on the page between the two views.
The state periodically revises prior filings as amended returns and audits come in, so this dataset is rebuilt each month using the most current figures available for every prior month, not just what was originally filed.
Vermont also reports a state-level-only “Other” category — short-term rental platforms (Airbnb, VRBO, and similar) plus composite or out-of-state filers — that can’t be attributed to any individual town. Because it’s one statewide bucket rather than town-by-town reporting, it’s excluded from every Vermont total on this page for the entire period shown; folding it in would make Stowe’s (and every other town’s) share of the state look artificially small, and would make year-over-year comparisons of the Vermont totals meaningless. Stowe’s own figures are unaffected either way — this only concerns how the statewide comparison totals are built. The State of Vermont changed how it reports this row partway through the dataset: through 2022 it appeared on a separate, county-level “County Data” tab of each monthly report; starting January 2023, as part of a reporting change to comply with taxpayer confidentiality requirements, it moved onto the same table as the town-by-town figures instead. The Vermont Department of Taxes confirmed directly (Oct 2026) that it’s the same underlying category in both formats, just relocated — so it’s reconstructed here as one continuous series back to January 2019, the same as every other chart on this page, and tracked on its own below since it’s the best available signal for statewide short-term rental activity.
Seasons are defined as Winter (December through March), Spring (April–June), Summer (July–August), and Fall (September–November), grouping December with the following year’s Winter to match how the ski season actually falls on the calendar.