The future is tourism

John Farr has lived in Encampment for several years. Farr is also the Encampment representative for the Carbon County Visitors Council (CCVC) and is pleased with how the board promotes the county to the nation and world.

“It has some sharp people on the board and you can tell they love their area they represent in Carbon County the way I love Encampment,” Farr said.

He started out a Colorado native, but came to the Valley years ago for fishing and knew this was the place he wanted to retire.

“I lived in Summit County (Colorado), which is the biggest ski county in the United States, and I watched it develop into a major ski resort,” Farr said. “Then later I moved to Taos, New Mexico and watched it change and, in both cases, I was involved in their chamber of commerce.”

He has seen firsthand what tourism can do for communities. Farr sees parallels to the places he lived before and the Valley. He said an opportunity for tourism in Carbon County is to keep Battle Pass between Encampment and Snake River Valley open all year long.

“I have had people over the years ask if it is a safe highway that goes between the two areas and I tell them it is,” Farr said. “It is historical, with beautiful wildlife and wild flowers in spring and summer and in winter it could be another chance for the two communities to create tourist opportunities.”

Farr said, with all the roads throughout Carbon County, the accessibility of the area makes it ideal for visitors to feel like they have a park to themselves.

“Most places don’t have all that we have,” Farr said. “I have watched people come from all over the world to do different things here. They want to see the mountains, they want to fish and explore beauty that is incomparable.”

He said that Riverside and Encampment being made gateway towns to the Continental Divide is opening the area to more hikers.

“Sandy Martin says when you get to Encampment it is a place that nature waits to greet you,” Farr recounted. “I like that slogan.”

He said the area is also excellent for deer hunting.

“People come from all over to hunt here and I understand why,” Farr said. “I have been hunting all my life and I have seen 1000 deer in one morning when they are migrating. To me, that is fascinating to watch.”

Farr said snow sports have become important over the years he has been in the Valley.

“Both scenic highways are ideal for snowmobiling,” Farr said. “I am a warm weather person and I have a nice warm house and I tend to stay in it during winter, but it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what others see in our winters and natural beauty that comes with that time of year.”

Danny Burau, owner of Firewater Public House in Saratoga, is the town’s representative to CCVC.

Burau has lived in several parts of the country. He came to Saratoga three years ago from Colorado.

He said Saratoga charmed him and his wife when they visited. Burau said the two decided on the way back to their Denver home that they wanted to raise their young family in the Valley and made the commitment to open a restaurant in Saratoga.

Burau was honored when the town asked him to replace Kim Hytrek, whose term had expired and could not be renewed, to be the representative for Saratoga. He was surprised once he got on the board to learn as much as he has on tourism in Carbon County and Wyoming.

“I have my passions and there were things that I thought the state did for tourism, but honestly the level of thinking about the lodging tax and how it is distributed, how we use it and how tourism effects so many industries wasn’t in my mind as strongly as it is since I came aboard the Visitors Council,” Burau said. “I think the biggest component I have seen is how educated I have become in the politics and legislative process that is used in this industry.”

He said that tourism effects many industries besides the obvious travel related businesses. Burau pointed out people spending money in towns– whether it was gas, groceries or retail goods such as clothing– all helped the local and state economy.

Recently the CCVC changed the grant system that had been in place for years and Burau acknowledged there was some unhappiness in the Saratoga community about the changes.

“I understand the frustrations and I do think I should have taken more time to discuss and understand where everybody was coming from and how they thought it would effect them,” Burau said. “I saw this (the changes) as a real opportunity as a board to help them advertise. We could use our buying power as a board to negotiate more media at a lower price. So we could take the funds that the individual events were weaned off of and we, as a board, could still promote their event but get the power of stronger media buy, so we could have a broader reach with less money.”

He said the misconception was that funds for advertising different events would cease when, in actuality the CCVC would still be promoting events. Burau said the funds would be directed to bring more visitors into Carbon County with all the events.

“We can focus our marketing efforts that benefit Carbon County tourism along with the events that help bring them here,” Burau said. “The goal is to get them to stay several nights and that is done by targeting demographics. This way we know who is coming here and why they are coming here and what they are looking for.”

He said the marketing studies that the CCVC has taken in the past year is quantifying tourism and believes the CCVC is going in the right direction to understand tourism more completely.

“As we learn more, we will be more laser focused on how we spend the money to have more impact, because we can go to somebody in the Front Range, if that is our target audience, or we can buy newspaper advertising or Facebook advertising for something more local, but we can negotiate to get more promotion for our money” Burau said. “We still will be advertising those events, but we can do more collectively with, say, $6,000 for media purchase versus six events using their $1,000 budget individually.”

Burau points out it is about purchasing on economies of scale.

“Negotiation power is stronger with a bigger buy,” Burau said. “We will reach a lot more people in lot more area.”

Burau reinforces that the changes to the grant system has never been with the intention of stopping funding for individual events or to impose hardship.

“This grant change was meant to have more benefit and impact,” Burau said. “Some of the grants were used for giving away prize money and this causes some discomfort to certain events now that this is gone, but the funds for tourism are supposed to bring people in from out of county and promotion is the best way.”

Burau understands the changes are painful but he said, as a business owner, if more people are visiting he is more willing to make donations for events because of advertising targeting people who will come.

“The CCVC is supposed to grow tourism here and I think the most effective way to do this is support events for a few years and then to continue to support them behind the scenes,” Burau said. “This will benefit the entire county because we have stronger negotiating power. I don’t know if this will make people feel better in the short term, but long term this will be positive for the entire county.”

The CCCV has representatives from Baggs, Encampment, Elk Mountain, Hanna, Medicine Bow, Riverside, Saratoga and Carbon County. Currently Rawlins does not have a representative. The position has been open for over two years.

Burau said the analytics and marketing can be hyper focused on bringing visitors to Carbon County with the new system.

“We have a lot of cool stuff in the Valley and Carbon County and need to be able to promote it to a bigger audience,” Burau said. “Each of these communities are a little patch of a quilt and if we can talk about them as a whole quilt, people understand there are a lot events going on in this county.”

Burau believes tourism is the future for the state and Carbon County.

“It has been relatively untapped, with the exception of Yellowstone and Jackson,” Burau said. “I think the opportunities are everywhere else in the state and that there is a chance for real economic growth in places like Carbon County. There is a reason I say the future is tourism. As the younger generation gets more purchasing power and have families, more and more are traveling by vans and RVs and taking road trips. They are looking for places exactly like what Carbon County offers. It is up to the CCVC to let them know what is here, and we will.”