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Mountain News: Vail cultivates destination visitors

Colorado towns review lodging tax; Canmore considering tourism

VAIL, Colo. - Vail Resorts this year has put more energy into courting destination skiers, including those from other countries.

Vail always has been blessed - and, depending upon who's talking, cursed - with a balanced portfolio. It has both day and overnight skiers from Denver 100 miles away and other communities along Colorado's Front Range. It also is a destination for more distant travelers, and for decades has had a healthy number of international visitors, 10 per cent more or less.

Adam Sutter, marketing director for Vail Mountain, said the resort should have more than 70 per cent destination skiers. He tells the Vail Daily that the company sees the potential for strong growth among visitors from Canada, Mexico and Australia.

While Vail always has had many wealthy Mexican skiers, it lately has adopted a Spanish-language camp for children. That program aims to keep Mexicans in Vail next spring for an extra week, in conjunction with the Easter holiday.

"We have to do everything we can not to take that business for granted," Sutter said. "We have a unique footprint in Mexico, and we ought to do everything we can to nurture it."

 

Towns review lodging tax

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. - Voters in at least three ski towns - Aspen, Breckenridge and Jackson - will be approving or rejecting proposals for new or increased lodging taxes. In several cases, the added revenues would supplement sagging town budgets while also boosting efforts to market the communities as tourism destinations.

In Breckenridge, the proposed 1 per cent tax increase seems to have broad support from the lodging and restaurant communities, reports the Summit Daily News. The tax would boost the existing $1.68 million fund to $2.2 million. Boosters say the money can help the resort fill lulls, such as that in February, while also promoting the town as a destination, similar to Vail.

One marketing director, Bruce Horii, tells the newspaper that the lodging companies would prefer a different tax, but they believe this one has the best chance of approval.

In Wyoming, Jackson voters are being asked to adopt a tax that would yield $1.5 million for the diminishing town treasury and $2 million for marketing. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports a community divided, as has been the case repeatedly in the last 16 years since the tax was repealed.

Examining arguments by both opponents and proponents, business analyst Jonathan Schechter finds both sides presenting bogus arguments.

Those supporting the tax have cited the loss of 2,000 jobs - implying that the lodging tax will restore them. However, that argument assumes all jobs are equal. Not true, he points out, as the average tourism job pays 40 per cent less than the average construction job.

Opponents miss the same point. They say that tourism will increase traffic congestion and otherwise sully the quality of life, Schechter points out. But the tourism economy has stagnated over the last 15 years, while congestion and other problems have worsened.

"My conclusion? For the past 20 years, Teton County's growth industry has been growth itself, particularly growth in our well-to-do population. This 'industry' has treated us very, very well, but it's also an industry we know very little about," Schechter says.

"Now's a good time to ask whether we want to continue hanging our economic hat on growth or instead look to something different. And if we decide the latter, we need to figure out what that something is. If it's tourism, the lodging tax's $2 million a year might provide a catalyst toward that new future. Or it might not."

 

Canmore considers tourism

CANMORE, Alberta - With municipal elections just around the corner, council candidates in Canmore were being asked about efforts to bolster the tourism economy.

Incumbent Mayor Ron Casey suggested that marketing dollars could be raised through a levy on commercial property. "It is extremely difficult to take taxpayers' dollars and turn them over to a third party agency unless in fact there are clear deliverables and accountability," he said.

Another candidate said Canmore can promote tourism by ensuring it remains an authentic town and community. He said the pride of locals in their homes and their lifestyles will be reflected in the delivery of services to visitors on a one-on-one basis.

Still another candidate called for Canmore to become more of a destination, and not just a gateway to Banff National Park.

 

Steamboat examining new tax

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - The Great Recession could also be called the Great Reassessment. The economic shudder has caused mountain towns to revaluate their economic foundations, land-use decisions, and funding formulae.

Many mountain town governments have relied greatly, almost exclusively, on sales tax revenues. In the good times, sales tax revenues have been generous to ski towns. But they plummeted from 2008 to 2009 and even now remain stagnant.

In Steamboat Springs, town officials have set out to review how a property tax might be adopted to create a more diverse portfolio.

A blogger writing on the newspaper's website, says that what appears to be the "new normal" poses many questions about the role of town governments. In Steamboat, should it provide recreation facilities? It has done handsomely with Howelsen Hill, a community ski area where some of the world's best ski jumpers have trained. How about marketing dollars? Less snowplowing?

 

La Niña won't bless all

VAIL, Colo. - Who will get the snow this year? It being a La Niña cycle in the Pacific Ocean favours the more northerly resorts. In Sun Valley, they're already girding for a long, hard winter.

On the flip side, this isn't something Telluride should cheer. And normally, Vail will lose during a La Niña winter, although the 2007-2008 La Niña winter was one of the most blessed powdery ones in memory.

While duly noting that exception, climate forecaster Klaus Wolter of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration doesn't expect much for the ski resorts of Colorado's I-70 corridor. He tells the Vail Daily that although he's a skier, he didn't buy a season pass this winter.

 

Holy Cross claims another

MINTURN, Colo. - The search was called off last week for a 35-year-old man from Chicago who had set out to circumnavigate Mount of the Holy Cross. It was the second apparent fatality among hikers in that area during the last five years, although searches are commonly mounted several times each year.

The most common cause of misfortune is the mountain itself. At 14,005 feet in elevation, it's among Colorado's highest, although technically not difficult. But getting to the base involves climbing over a pass, making for a long day. Often, hikers have gotten confused when descending the mountain's enormous field of boulders and ended up on cliffs, completely baffled by their surroundings and how they got there.

In one case from August 1997, a retired teacher from St. Louis had wandered off the trail while awaiting a companion and was not seen for about a week. Vail Mountain Rescue Group volunteers scoured the area on foot and from helicopters.

At length, rescuers decided to take one last pass of the area in a helicopter. Above a boulder field, somebody noticed something - a speck of colour different than the routine brown and gray of granite. It was the woman, on the edge of death.

The hiker this year intended to work his way around the mountain in a 26-mile route loop across several 11,000- and 12,000-foot passes. It can be done easily enough by fit, healthy backpackers in three days, although he planned five days. He also planned to climb the mountain at the end. He was described as an experienced hiker, although photos taken at the trailhead suggest he was considerably overweight.

He took neither a beacon, as friends suggested, nor a telephone, although it's not clear how the latter would have helped. There's not much cell phone reception in the heart of the Holy Cross Wilderness Area.

Did he roll an ankle in some off-trail location? Was he attacked and dragged off by a cougar?

Maybe no one will ever know. It's a big, big area.

 

Local slaughterhouses needed

JACKSON, Wyo. - Wendell Berry, a writer from Kentucky, was in Jackson Hole recently to talk and read some of his works. He's first and foremost a writer, and also a teacher. He is broadly known as an essayist because of his deep connections to his native landscape as a part-time farmer.

In this, Berry was either a hold-over from the past or an early adoptee of the new locovore and sustainability trend of recent years.

In advance of his visit to Wyoming, Berry told the Jackson Hole News & Guide that the proliferation of farmers' markets and community-supported farms encourage him.

"I am very much interested in and excited by the awakening among consumers toward fresh, local, healthy food," he said. "We have been slow to make a connection between health and food, food and farming. These connections still need to be made in some people's minds."

But there are challenges, he added. Local food efforts need small-scale local slaughtering and meat-processing facilities, so that people can have locally grown fresh meat as easily as they get locally grown fresh vegetables and fruits.

"It would mean livestock would be better treated," he added. "They wouldn't have to be hauled all over the country or mashed into feedlots. They would be healthy. It would just be better for everyone except the food corporations."

 

Coal plants endanger fish

DURANGO, Colo. - With two giant coal-fired power plants in the Four Corners area and one major new one now in the que, Durango has a long-standing interest in the effects of burning coal. Now comes new evidence that pollution from the existing plans has harmed two fish in tributaries of the Colorado River: the pikeminnow and razorback sucker. Both are on the U.S. government's threatened and endangered species list.

The Telegraph reports that biological assessment by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that mercury and selenium from the power plants is "likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker."