The Telluride Tourism Board primarily markets Telluride, Colo., to the outside world, nothing else. A mere five years ago, the board went by a different name and operated very similarly to the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau. It had a chamber and business members, and also a visitors bureau offering visitor services. It was also in charge of external marketing. But that structure was dropped to create the tourism board and focus entirely on external marketing.
CEO Scott McQuade said he was brought in during that shift five years ago to lead the revamped marketing effort.
"Since then, we have purely been a marketing organization," he said.
He said the board's $1.3 million budget is a step up from the previous organization's funding from the city, which allocates lodging taxes and business licensing fees to the board.
"The city put the trigger in place to route money to the new organization," McQuade said, adding that the change was at the request of the public, which thought the chamber and visitors bureau wasn't working.
Sound familiar?
Similar changes have been facing the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau since May 18, when a committee recommended that external marketing efforts be handed to a new marketing board, and much of the cities' funding be rerouted to the board. The committee contended that would spur the economic revitalization that the resort area needs.
The Ketchum and Sun Valley mayors have backed the recommendation and proposed that the chamber portion of the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau be disbanded. They have said the business members could then form their own chamber.
That was also done in Telluride. But, McQuade said, no chamber has formed in the meantime.
McQuade said the tourism board approach has been successful in Telluride, proven by community-wide growth in business over the past few years. He said measuring marketing success isn't an "exact science" because unlike an individual business' marketing itself, the rewards of marketing Telluride are reaped by many.
"If the community is doing well, that's enough," he said.
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Last winter, Telluride had a record skier count of 450,000.
"I wish I could say it was all us," he said. "But when things are going good, at least people can't put you down."
In the Sun Valley resort area, things aren't going so well. Over the past decade, Ketchum's sales tax collections decreased by 35 percent and Sun Valley's by 23 percent.
But other resorts' marketing efforts aren't all like Telluride's tourism board.
Jackson, Wyo., has a chamber of commerce in charge of visitor services and external marketing for the resort area, like the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau's operations up to now.
Heather Falk, tourism manager for Jackson's chamber, said town and county sales taxes provide a mere $8,600 marketing budget for an entire year, far less than Sun Valley's $712,000.
Falk said the chamber partners with business members in most marketing efforts, and those co-ops account for an additional $84,000. That's still minimal compared to Sun Valley's funding, which proponents of the Sun Valley marketing board have deemed as too little and say needs to be bumped up to nearly $1.2 million.
But, Falk said, the chamber doesn't need a lot of marketing dollars. Jackson and nearby Jackson Hole Mountain Resort have a number of four-star chain hotels that, she said, do $10 million of marketing on their own.
Sun Valley and Ketchum, on the other hand, don't have a single four-star hotel between them that belongs to a chain. In that respect, Telluride is very similar to Sun Valley. McQuade said Telluride's hotels are all independent.
"And they're looking to us for marketing," he said.
The Aspen Chamber Resort Association in Colorado receives about the same amount of money as does the Sun Valley chamber. Lodging tax provides between $500,000 to $800,000, according to President and CEO Debbie Braun. Plus, the chamber also has business members and, like the Sun Valley chamber, organizes events and visitor services.
"Things aren't going good here, either," she said, adding that the public can't automatically blame whoever's in charge of marketing. "It's not: Occupancy has fallen, therefore someone's not doing his or her job."
But Sun Valley's problems extend further back than the current recession.
Braun said she has been watching the marketing situation unfold in Sun Valley this spring and warned against cutting out the chamber and visitors bureau from marketing, claiming that a new board wouldn't have an effect in time for next winter, as planned.
"From the outside looking in, you already have a structure in place," she said. "If you don't like what's being done, look at the people in place, not the organization."
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
Downtown Aspen, Colo., sits at the base of Aspen Mountain, one of four ski mountains in the area. Photo by Trina Benson
