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Partnerships are key

Tough Mudder participants, their friends and family are set to make Whistler a sea of orange and pack the resort with a type of team spirit that in many ways defines the resort.
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Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com

Tough Mudder participants, their friends and family are set to make Whistler a sea of orange and pack the resort with a type of team spirit that in many ways defines the resort.

Even the genesis of the event is a story well shared here, as it personifies the doggedness of many business people who came here to live a dream and made it work even though some friends and family told them they were crazy.

In case you don't know the story, Tough Mudder is the brainchild of Will Dean, a former counter-terrorism agent for the British government. While getting his MBA at Harvard, Dean was inspired to start Tough Mudder. It was born out of a frustration he had with marathons and triathlons that were just getting boring.

Harvard was pretty skeptical of his idea — it's been reported that most of his professors thought he would fail though it was a semi-finalist in the school's annual business plan competition.

The first Tough Mudder challenge was held in the United States in 2010 and was promoted exclusively on Facebook — also considered an unwise move by some Harvard professors. The whole event was launched with a $300 website and a Facebook ad.

In 2012, roughly 500,000 people worldwide participated in a total of 35 events, making Tough Mudder the world's fastest-growing adventure series. After only two years of existence Tough Mudder, as a company, is worth $70 million.

Part of the incredible success of the event is the way it sells itself — it is honest in a way many in marketing departments everywhere have forgotten how to be. At the end of the Mudder everyone gets an orange headband — worn everywhere as a badge of honour post competition. It's a small pretty-inexpensive trinket but its cache is huge.

And you get a beer at the end not a piece of fruit. Let's be honest most people finishing a gruelling race that marks a milestone for them would rather celebrate than eat an orange. Then there is the death waiver you have to sign at the beginning. Crazy or a stroke of marketing genius?

Sadly, this past April a participant did die during a Tough Mudder event in West Virginia, bringing home the truth that while this type of event is growing exponentially it does contain dangerous challenges.

This weekend the resort will be at capacity as Whistler hosts the 19,000 registered participants and the at least 6,000 others expected to cheer them on and celebrate afterwards.

In many ways, the participants who take part in something like Tough Mudder are natural Whistler visitors and whatever the resort can do to encourage them to come back and try the valley's natural challenges is good marketing.

Securing events like this, Ironman, the GranFondo and other events that celebrate adventure are a key part of success in the future.

You can't escape that destination visitors spend more money during their vacations than many of these event-driven tourists, but in the summer months Whistler needs to create a persona for itself around what we are — which is recreation and celebration — whether that is through music, art, food or culture.

Targetting might be key.

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTCC) recently said that the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans-gender (LGBT) market in the United States alone is estimated to be worth over U.S. $55 billion and around U.S. $165 billion globally.

Significantly, the LGBT sector is growing faster than the broader travel and tourism economy — it grew by almost 10 per cent in 2012 year on year — against global growth of the industry of around three per cent.

This is no doubt something Whistler should bear in mind as it considers financial support of the WinterPRIDE week — much in the news in the last month with the release of an Economic Impact Assessment report which shows the festival provides a $4.6 million industry output in the province and a $2.4 million impact in Whistler.

The key is forming meaningful partnerships between the private sector — festival event producers like Tough Mudder and WinterPRIDE — and the public sector.

But don't take my word for it. The same sentiment was just echoed by David Scowsill, the president and CEO of WTCC in his closing speech at the 13th Global Summit in Abu Dhabi last month.

"The private and public sector must come together and focus on long term strategies, infrastructure and initiatives, not just short- term goals, to ensure that our industry is ahead of the growth curve," he said.

Attendees at the summit heard that by 2023 the WTTC forecasts that travel and tourism's total economic contribution will account for 10 per cent of global GDP, $10.5 trillion U.S., and one in 10 jobs. Total travel and tourism employment is forecast to add over 70 million jobs over the next decade, with two-thirds of those additional jobs in Asia. Asia will continue to lead growth of the industry, with annual average growth of over six per cent.

It is hard to fathom what those numbers might mean for Whistler, but one thing is for sure, both sectors need to work together. That means keeping international travel safe and simple, making border crossings less complex, thinking about how we tax our tourists and considering how all levels of government can work with tourism operators to build infrastructure to support growth.