World welcome — and not just in 2002

SYDNEY — Sitting on a bench overlooking picturesque Sydney Harbor, Utah's Dean Reeder is talking the three T's — tourism, taxes and trouble.

Tourism because that's his job. He's director of the Utah Division of Travel Development.

Taxes because it takes money to make money, and Reeder is waxing philosophical about how more tax revenues would help fund his office's work to increase tourism, especially with the 2002 Winter Games on their way.

And trouble because talking about taxes, he says, will get him in some. As in: "If I get on this rant, I'll be in big trouble." Utah, he says, must avoid the scary tourism pattern that Calgary, Canada, experienced after the 1988 Winter Games there. For two years after those Games, tourism numbers went up but then dropped to below where they were before the Olympics, Reeder said.

Now, 12 years after the Games, tourism is above where it was before the Olympics, so overall they have been a positive thing for Calgary's tourism, he said.

But avoiding a post-Games drop is important to Utah. Important to Reeder.

So what is Utah doing toward that end? "Not enough," Reeder says.

That's when he launches into his "rant" about government, saying it wants to run more like a business. Reeder says it really can't. A business manages both revenues and expenditures. Government, on the other hand, is only managing expenditures, he says.

"What New South Wales has done is these guys are managing for revenue," Reeder says.

What that means is that in addition to the millions the state of New South Wales pumps into promoting tourism, the Australian federal government is pouring in $100 million as well.

Spending money to make money.

By contrast, Congress recently closed the U.S. Tour and Travel Administration and its $17 million budget, Reeder said.

Still, he says, Utah is doing what it can:

• Lacking federal support for promoting tourism off the 2002 Winter Games, Utah and its neighboring states have formed a consortium to coordinate tourism promotion.

• Reeder's office is also using $1.2 million in one-time money from the 2000 Legislature to produce and air TV ads in California promoting pre-Games tourism. "The idea is we're open now. Come now," he said.