On October 29, I attended the Park City’s Chamber pre-season presentation a forum in which self-congratulations abounded. Along with our three local resorts, Deer Valley, Park City and the Canyons, Arnie Weissmann, editor-in-chief at Travel Weekly spoke and expressed some dire warnings about this year’s snow season.
Among other predictions, he said that the economic crisis and higher plane fares were affecting all forms of tourism, and the cruise industry, Las Vegas and eastern ski resorts will make it tough for Park City and the other western resorts. In spite of an admitted decline ranging between 15 to 20% in early bookings as of the end of September, all three resorts and no one in the Chamber appeared too worried and what’s worse, there wasn't any “Plan B” should the booking situation and visitations keep on deteriorating as the season advances. This, to me, is denial at its best.
We certainly are competing with the cruise business, Las Vegas and other warm destinations, but also against the Vails, Whistlers and Lake Tahoes of the world. Why is there no mechanism in place that would declare and promote a roll-back on prices and rates, attractive “specials” on lift tickets and all kinds of creative “product bundling” ideas, should bookings keep on dipping south, in order to steal some clientele from our neighboring destination resorts? Of course, we’ve got too good a product in Park City to even take interconnecting seriously and give our visitors a much better reason to pick us over the rest… I am missing something or has “competition” become a dirty word?
From JF Lanvers' blog
Showing posts with label dv-pc-tc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dv-pc-tc. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
The case for a Greater Park City interconnect
In spite of a snow-record year, the Park City Chamber/Bureau is projecting lodging numbers to be down about 14 percent during the first two weeks of March compared to the previous year. While in the recent past, March used to be the biggest month of the winter season, it has now dropped to second place. This suggests that there might be lodging oversupply through the Mountain West, including the flurry of new Western Canadian resorts added in recent years.
In a universe where all resorts look pretty much the same and quickly suffer from skiers and riders “fatigue,” this makes the entire market much more competitive and ends up spreading a quasi-stagnant volume on a fast growing number of resorts and beds, which explains that outside of the December Holiday Season, President’s Week and Spring Break, business becomes a bit thinner in and around Park City.
Faced with that, what should our community do in order to maximize its capacity and increase revenue? Do what’s the easiest, and re-engineer its product by interconnecting our three mountains and instilling a new sense of adventure instead of just going up and down the same hills the old-fashioned way. With a reasonable investment (a few connecting lifts and a common ski-pass processing system) our town could easily be vaulted into the number one destination resort in North America, leaving Vail and Whistler-Blackcomb far behind, at a very safe distance, and this not just because we’d offer the largest skiable acreage, but also through a vastly superior ease of access, great terrain variety and significant options for future expansion (by adding Brighton, Solitude, Snowbird and Alta later on to the network).
Our visitation would more than double and Utah could take a big chunk of market share away from its competition, guaranteeing a longer, busier and more profitable winter season for all, along with keeping real estate values up. Furthermore, there is no risk to the operation; it started almost half a century ago in Europe, has been thoroughly tested, and everywhere it’s been done, has been a screaming success!
From JF Lanvers' blog
In a universe where all resorts look pretty much the same and quickly suffer from skiers and riders “fatigue,” this makes the entire market much more competitive and ends up spreading a quasi-stagnant volume on a fast growing number of resorts and beds, which explains that outside of the December Holiday Season, President’s Week and Spring Break, business becomes a bit thinner in and around Park City.
Faced with that, what should our community do in order to maximize its capacity and increase revenue? Do what’s the easiest, and re-engineer its product by interconnecting our three mountains and instilling a new sense of adventure instead of just going up and down the same hills the old-fashioned way. With a reasonable investment (a few connecting lifts and a common ski-pass processing system) our town could easily be vaulted into the number one destination resort in North America, leaving Vail and Whistler-Blackcomb far behind, at a very safe distance, and this not just because we’d offer the largest skiable acreage, but also through a vastly superior ease of access, great terrain variety and significant options for future expansion (by adding Brighton, Solitude, Snowbird and Alta later on to the network).
Our visitation would more than double and Utah could take a big chunk of market share away from its competition, guaranteeing a longer, busier and more profitable winter season for all, along with keeping real estate values up. Furthermore, there is no risk to the operation; it started almost half a century ago in Europe, has been thoroughly tested, and everywhere it’s been done, has been a screaming success!
From JF Lanvers' blog
Thursday, October 25, 2007
A one-company town?
Let me quickly set the stage for you. Park City has three ski resorts that are all different entities and are not interconnected (yet.) Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley Resort are leasing their land from Talisker, a Canadian-based real estate company.
That same Talisker is about to purchase and operate The Canyons, our third ski mountain that sits just next to Park City. Since the landlord for the two first resorts will now be operating the third one, one could speculate that Park City resorts now have a common denominator, which would make it the de-facto dominating economic force in the community.
How should our city engage that 800 pound gorilla? What should we expect from them? Should we instead, as many advocate, roll over and play dead under the behemoth? This certainly is not my opinion. The silver lining of that consolidation could be that, with a single underlying player, we might get closer to interconnecting our resorts and offer a much enhanced skiing and snowboarding experience.
From JF Lanvers' blog
That same Talisker is about to purchase and operate The Canyons, our third ski mountain that sits just next to Park City. Since the landlord for the two first resorts will now be operating the third one, one could speculate that Park City resorts now have a common denominator, which would make it the de-facto dominating economic force in the community.
How should our city engage that 800 pound gorilla? What should we expect from them? Should we instead, as many advocate, roll over and play dead under the behemoth? This certainly is not my opinion. The silver lining of that consolidation could be that, with a single underlying player, we might get closer to interconnecting our resorts and offer a much enhanced skiing and snowboarding experience.
From JF Lanvers' blog
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