Ski Resorts Hope to Lure Utahans Fleeing 2002 Winter Olympics

Like a beast lurking in the jungle, it waits. Oh yes, it will get you. Tie you up in ungodly traffic jams. Reduce your daily routine to shambles. Run Away!

That, in a nutshell, is the pitch ski resorts in states surrounding Utah are hoping to make in early 2002, as Salt Lake City residents and skiing tourists from elsewhere face the prospect of three weeks of Olympic mayhem.

At Jackson, Wyo.--200 miles northeast of Salt Lake City--marketers are busy thinking up ways to reel in Utah residents in February 2002. The hook already is baited, the marketers figure, with the fear that enormous events like the Olympics generate.

Anna Olson, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s spokeswoman, says Jackson Hole hopes to attract families that want a skiing vacation but have been shoved off their favorite Wasatch Mountain slopes by the Olympic hubbub. But timing is important in the marketing business, so Jackson Hole isn’t going to make its pitch until a few months before the games begin.

Idaho resorts such as Sun Valley are expected to pursue a similar course. Tourism officials there hope to lure Utah residents as well as some of the 200,000 visitors a day expected to attend the games.

“We’ve been advertising in Salt Lake for the past two winters in an attempt to raise awareness in the area of Idaho as a winter vacation destination,” said Carl Wilgus, Idaho’s tourism director.

Idaho officials plan to ratchet up the advertising during the next two winters. “We’re going to give them a safety line to come to Idaho,” Wilgus promised.

So what makes Wilgus, Olson and others in neighboring states so certain Utah residents will want to flee?

“We found that phenomenon happening in Atlanta in 1996. We found it in Los Angeles in 1984. People who live there don’t want to put up with the hassle,” Wilgus said.

While it’s too early for Utah residents to begin making travel plans, Wilgus has a point. A few months before the 1996 Summer Games, a Georgia State University poll found that 18% of the city’s residents said they were likely to leave.

The trade association that represents Utah’s ski resorts says it’s a near certainty that “destination skiers,” folks who fly from elsewhere to hit the slopes, will go elsewhere during the 2002 season. But locals who like to ski ought not to be scared away, said Ski Utah president Kip Pitou.

“I think Idaho is barking up the wrong tree with this one,” Pitou said.

In Colorado--the 800-pound gorilla of Western skiing--it’s not clear whether individual resorts or even their trade association, Colorado Ski Country USA, are going to mount an advertising campaign.

“My guess is there may be two markets of opportunity with regard to the Olympics,” said Charlie Mayfield, vice president of marketing for the Colorado group. “One might be Salt Lake residents . . . but I think the greater windfall opportunity for other resorts are destination skiers who are going to be displaced by the Olympics.”

Some of the business is going to head to Colorado without a dollar being spent on advertising, Mayfield said, because Colorado resorts already are well known and an obvious second choice for anyone who wants to ski but can’t get a room or a lift ticket at a Utah resort.

Mayfield didn’t ask, but Idaho’s Pitou has some free advice on how to make money while Salt Lake is crowded: “If they were smart they’d be in Europe right now telling people to come in through Denver and spend a few days in Colorado before heading to the Olympics.”