County mulls over how to restructure Tourism Association

Report recommendation suggests replacement

The future of the Gunnison Valley Tourism Association as currently structured is uncertain now that the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners has seen the final report of a study commissioned to make sure more than $1 million in County marketing money is being spent wisely every year.

Marv and Marty Weidner of Managing Results, a consulting firm that’s worked with the County on its own management practices, provided the report after conducting almost 50 interviews with 33 Tourism Association or Chamber of Commerce board members, administrators and other valley residents with marketing expertise since April.
From those interviews, the Weidners came up with a list of what they see as necessary improvements in the Valley’s marketing apparatus that would “unify” the marketing message and move away from marketing individual businesses, favoring an approached focused on the experiences available in the Gunnison Valley.
There was also a call to better understand how the Valley stacks up against its competition and to overcome the opinion held by some people that what happens at one end of the Valley doesn’t effect the economy at the other end. “We think that’s a, not fatal, but very serious error,” Marv said.
The recommendations were also aimed at clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the Local Marketing District board that is comprised of the county commissioners, the Tourism Association and the Chambers of Commerce. Specifically, the report called for an end to the requirement that LMD funds be spent on marketing only Chamber members and suggested that each organization collaborate better.
In bringing in a consultant, the commissioners were also ostensibly looking for ways to improve cooperation between the LMD, the TA and the Chambers. At the same time, it hoped to improve the accountability and efficiency of the money being spent on marketing.
But at a commissioner’s work session Tuesday, October 14, there was tension among some members of the Tourism Association board of directors and administrators, past and present.  
The report didn’t do much to shore up anyone’s confidence that the TA would continue to operate as it currently does, administering most of the $1.2 million in marketing money every year and directing a valley-wide marketing effort. In his presentation at the work session, Marv explicitly pointed out that the TA was technically a not-for-profit whose relationship to the County was that of an independent contractor.
“The IGA that originally created the TA ceased to be in effect when Mt. CB withdrew [its funding],” he said. “Section 7 of the original IGA reads, ‘The Agreement will be automatically renewed unless terminated in writing … or in the event any party doesn’t make the necessary annual appropriation’.”
While the commissioners hadn’t made any decisions about the future of the TA, the report suggested that there were some problems with the relationship between the LMD and the TA and put forward a few recommendations about how that might be remedied.
Weidner also talked about combating an ‘entitlement mentality’, in which one organization or contractor felt entitled to the County’s marketing money.
Former TA board member and Three Rivers Resort owner Mark Schumacher suggested that the commissioners were abandoning the TA, an organization he said was at the crux of public support for the 4-percent lodging tax that funds the LMD.
Part of the Weidners’ plan would, over the near term, use the current TA structure as it transitions toward a more competitive process that does not include the TA as it exists today.
In the Weidners’ recommendation, much like the current marketing structure, the LMD would collect the proceeds from the lodging tax and pass it on to a newly-created seven member Marketing Board of Directors comprised mainly of local marketing experts.
“This Marketing Board of Directors should see that they’re competitively bidding the services they’re buying so you’re looking at the entire marketplace, choosing the very best vendors and getting the most for your money,” Marv said.
That board – recommended to consist of two people with professional marketing expertise, two people with local business experience and one person with extensive decision making experience, as well as the marketing directors of Crested Butte Mountain Resort and Western State Colorado University – would then steer the valley’s marketing effort, contracting with vendors and service providers where it saw fit, with input from stakeholders.
Through the interview process, the Weidners said they grew very confident in the abilities local people had to improve the valley’s marketing effort. But currently, their report said, the marketing effort is structured in what they called a ‘cooperative model’ that “works extremely well when there’s no conflict or competing interests” and “asks people to work well together but doesn’t require it,” Marv said. That has become the issue.
At the work session, Mt. Crested Butte town council member David O’Reilly said it concerned him that the new board wouldn’t include representatives from the valley’s municipalities. And he was told that the towns would be consulted on the valley’s marketing annually during a planning process that involved all stakeholders, but that the recommendation was to make board membership contingent on marketing expertise.
Otherwise, it appeared at the work session that people on both sides of the discussion agreed that the current TA board of directors was too large and that there were structural improvements to be made.
But there were questions of whether or not improvements could be made in the current system instead of abandoning it for something that looked structurally pretty similar.
Crested Butte Lodging and Property Management’s Wanda Bearth, who served on the TA board of directors and as chairperson for several years, said “I would agree with the composition of the board as you suggest it.
“There was a thought for many years that we should allow elected officials to have a vote. So it wasn’t just the 11 board members that were voting, but also all of the advisory board members. I was never in favor of that,” she said, agreeing with several of the other points in the report. “I don’t know that this is a big change from what the current setup is, other than the composition of the board. It looks like the same thing, just stirred a little bit.”
TA board member Ken Stone, who operates lodging properties in the valley, echoed those sentiments, saying, “The Tourism Association is pretty unwieldy because of the number of people who are involved on the board. I appreciate this report and the research that went into it. But I’m not sure creating a new entity and walking away from the Tourism Association is the way to do this. But if change can’t be made inside the Tourism Association to accommodate some of those suggestions, I think something has to be done.”
Stone said of all the places he’s lived and participated in the marketing effort, the Gunnison Valley is the most difficult to market because of its diversity. “It’s a great thing. We’re like a Siamese twin when it comes to the north end and south end of the body and we’re sharing vital organs. It makes it very difficult to hit the ball when it comes to us,” he said. “It’s also what makes us attractive.”
TA board member Jeff Moffet commended the Weidners on the report and said he supported the recommendations. “And I know most of the board members on the Tourism Association, as it stands right now, support it,” he said. His concern was with the data, which he said all suggests the Valley is under-performing as a tourist economy.
“People say, ‘well you charge too much money’. Well we’re not just the bottom of the competitive set, we’re the bottom of the industry. We’re the dollar store of mountain vacations in terms of ADR,” he said. “And I think we can do better.”
There were also concerns that the commissioners had already come to a conclusion that the TA had outgrown its usefulness even before the report was issued.
TA board president Jim McDonald said, “I do object to this report. I object to the manner in which this report was prepared. I respectfully submit that the conclusions were made when the process began. Anyone can have conclusions and then tailor data to support those conclusions. That’s my perception of what’s going on here.
“I believe the Tourism Association as a group absolutely accepts the idea that prosperity is a goal for everyone. The suggestion by Marv that that’s hard to discern from our current efforts, I just can’t accept that,” he said.
McDonald said he would provide more comments at the next work session between the commissioners and the TA, scheduled for 9 a.m. on October 28.