From Deseret News archives:
Stale data may yield fresh ideas on tourism
The staleness was attributable to the fact that the tourism numbers were from 2005 — before the state launched a new tourism brand and multimillion-dollar marketing campaign to lure out-of-state visitors.
The visitation and spending figures presented by Sindy Kohler, consulting research manager at D.K. Shifflet & Associates, were based on surveys of U.S. travelers. Generally, Utah attracts young families and couples, visitors usually visit friends and relatives, they tend to come from the Intermountain West and they arrive by driving rather than flying or taking a train.
But young families visiting families usually spend less than general vacationers, Kohler said. One potential target for Utah is people age 55 and older who have no children. That group tends to spend.
Kohler said other ways to increase tourism spending in Utah would be to encourage longer stays — 40 percent stay only one night and the average is 3.16 nights — promote outdoor activities and develop travel during autumn because of the state's broad options for nature-based leisure activities.
While skiers spend the most money per person, the strongest months for visiting Utah are August and June, followed by December. And most of the visitor spending happens in the spring.
Ski Utah President Nathan Rafferty told the board that springtime is when ski areas still have visitors while southern Utah becomes busy.
"That's where you see the overlap between the southern Utah and the ski (visitation)," he said. "So a bunch of people are down south in at least April, and March for us. And I don't know that there's overlap in other parts of the year like that."
Some of the figures presented Friday confirmed what board members already knew or suspected, and Chairman Kim McClelland noted that Utah's promotion to out-of-staters took that into account.
"I think there are some indicators in here that suggest that some of the decisions that we've made from a marketing perspective, both in terms of market and approach, will bear fruit in the future," McClelland said.
The survey results indicate that Utah had 31.2 million visitors and 69.3 million visitor-days in 2005. Overnight leisure visitation had its first decrease since 2001, although overnight leisure spending increased. Visitors' direct spending climbed 6.1 percent between 2004 and 2005, above the U.S. figure of 3.1 percent.
People visiting Utah on overnight leisure trips spent an average of $83 per day, although the figure for nonresidents was $91. The U.S. average was $102.
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com
