| OCR Text |
Show WASATCH MOUNTAIN PARK CITY REPORT Salt Lakers Not TIMES The next time you go out in Sought Spanning the Globe For Ski Tourists ask for | | fark City Squatters Ales & Lagers. If your favorite place , doesn’t have 1 Tourists at Park City Resort Center. PARK CITY — On the sidewalks of this town’s historic Main Street you can hear it. You can hear them in Park City’s coffee houses and restaurants, too. They speak German, French, Spanish, even Swedish. They have beautiful Scottish brogues or speak the Queen’s English. They are foreign tourists and most of them have flown all the way from Europe to taste the now famous “Greatest Snow on Earth.” e One young man from Glasgow, Scotland insists that it’s actually less expensive to ski Utah — air fare and all — than to take a ski vacation in the French Alps. “It’s a longer flight, but here we are.” e A foursome from Germany explains they wanted to sample “the famous Utah powder. It’s dry, ya?” the Park City bean counters. And that’s about all they can expect from the local, Salt Lake area skier. In a recent Park City radio interview, Doug Clyde, a Park City Ski Area official, who is helping to plan condominium development on what are now the resort’s parking lots, said local skiers don’t support the town the way tourists do. In essence, Clyde said that Salt Lakers made the ski area crowded on the weekend but fell short of providing real economic stimulus to the town. Irony of ironies, Utahns aren’t really sought after to ski on some of the mountains in their own backyard. Park Park City. The Park City Chamber of Commerce & Visitor's Bureau, the Park City Ski Area, and Ski Utah have been aggressively marketing their product abroad. And for good reason, the European and Japanese ski tourist markets remain virtually untapped, while the American market remains stagnant. “We are a very attractive alternative to Europe,” says Joan Calder, the executive director of Park City’s chamber of rates to locals, however. According to the most recent study, now three years old, each ski tourist spends an average of $215 a day. Today, that number is undoubtedly larger. “When you have an overnight skier-visitor, they are paying for many more services than the day skier and make an over-all greater contribution to the area,” Ms. Calder said. She noted, however, that 30 percent of the skiers who ski at Deer Valley or Park City Ski Area are Utahns. And come the summer months, those Utahns are more attractive to the commerce. town. But while it works dilligently to attract the national and international markets, Park City has done virtually no promotion this ski season in the Salt Lake area. Brighton, Solitude and “In the wintertime, we aren't active in the Salt Lake market. It is our charge to market for destination. But in the summer we do market in Salt Lake.” Salt Lake isn’t the only market for Park City’s summer season. Recently, Park City summer was advertised in the pages of The New Yorker, Other places It’s no accident these folks found Snowbird battle for local skiers on billboards and newspapers, but Park City is no where to be seen — at least in Salt Lake promotions. Why? Because even a $47 lift ticket and an $8 lunch just doesn’t cut it for Good for what ales you.” City still does offer discount pre-season POWDER BEACH REALTY Residential Sales Vacation Rentals rato s Property Management Park City Deer Valley Wolf Mountain magazine and even In Park City call: 645-9444 National Geographic. @ PAGE Snowbird/Alta Solitude/Brighton Salt Lake Valley (801) 944-9444 wr you might find Park City ads include GO og 13 rere” |
