Photo by Liz Copan / Summit Daily Archives
Officials from Breckenridge City Council and the Breckenridge Tourism Office said Tuesday they plan to reevaluate the city’s events following the pandemic, with a renewed focus on what President Lucy Kay, tourism office, describes as ‘responsible tourism’ .
“The goal we will have – and this is in line with other more progressive (destination marketing organizations) – is looking for ways to target our guests whose values are in line with ours,” Kay said on Tuesday. . “… Look at who people are who think of the environment, who think of other people, who think the same way we think of the world, and try to invite the people first.”
Eric Mamula, mayor of Breckenridge, said the city’s opportunities and resilience committees, along with the tourism office, will continue the initiative in the coming weeks.
The mayor said it is his personal belief that the pandemic provides an opportunity to be a good reset for our community to determine what kind of events should take place.
“It’s really a clean slate, and I think it’s absolutely worth continuing the talks,” said councilor Carol Saade.
The concept is not new. Even before the pandemic, cities in Summit County struggled with “fatigue at the events” among residents and worked to find solutions.
‘It’s a great way to look at it and say,’ OK, what are the events that are a kind of heritage event for the city? And what are the events that we are – honestly – without any reason to fill space, ” Mamula said. ‘Town is busy anyway. There seem to be a lot of weekends when we do things we do not really need. ”
Mamula warned of adding many opportunities in an effort to “fix the economy in one summer” and noted that some people in the community may be eager to “get things back to where they were two years ago” on Day 1 was’ after the pandemic is over.
“We will have to push back against the feeling that we have to go and live in a crazy country again,” Mamula said.
Kay agrees that “there is no hurry” about the initiative, because “we are still in this COVID thing for a long time.”
Kay said the tourism office plans to do a population survey again, possibly in late March or early April, to understand what the community really wants in this new world order?
Councilors Jeffery Bergeron, Kelly Owens and Erin Gigliello said they were not sure how many opportunities the city needed to attract visitors. Bergeron and Owens pointed to the claim the city saw last summer, when all opportunities were canceled, on its routes as a reason to scale back in the future.
Councilman Dennis Kuhn said he would like to see the city host a “community-wide celebration” once the pandemic is over, though he said: “It’s obviously a way forward.”
Holiday accommodation drops 17%
Also during Tuesday’s meeting, Kay briefed the city on the trends over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
On December 15 to January 3, the city declined by about 17%, or 4,000 room nights, compared to the same dates last year, Kay said, adding that most of the decline in the last two weeks of December was due to of many cancellations. She said the numbers from November 30 to December 15 were ‘much stronger’.
As for January, she said the city is looking at a 20% decrease in room nights with a forecast of a 16% decrease for the entire winter season. Anecdotally, Kay said local accommodation providers told the tourism office that the length of stay was shorter than usual.
Kay said the office should have better data over the next two weeks thanks to new destination marketing reports that track trends in the city via cell phone data. Kay said it could help the town determine more accurately how many people visit.
According to Kay, the tourism office also interviewed visitors and found that the mix of people in the city during the holidays “is quite similar to what it would normally be around Christmas.” According to Kay, the surveys showed that 53% of the destination guests were from abroad, while almost none were from abroad – a number of about 5%.
“And much more from Texas,” Kay said. “Texas is always our biggest market outside of Colorado, and Texas was very big this Christmas season.”
Kay also pointed out what she says is an apparent trend of more visitors to Breckenridge staying outside the city. The number of respondents who reported staying in Breckenridge decreased during the holiday season to 79% compared to 89% last year, Kay said.
Kay also said that more people are booking hotels directly through accommodation providers and properties, rather than intermediaries like Airbnb and VRBO. Kay thinks this is because it’s easier for tenants to cancel by booking in a more traditional way.
Regarding corornavirus-related survey questions, Kay said respondents gave a rating of 8.9 on a scale of 10 for how safe they felt during the holidays in Breckenridge. The marks were 9.3 for how well visitors were prepared for the COVID-19 expectations of the city and 8.6 for whether respondents thought protocols were appropriate.