The Sundance effect: Business owners expect this year's film festival to have a big economic impact

The Sundance International Film Festival planners and local business owners anticipate higher revenues and a larger economic impact this year than in previous years.

The annual film festival, which winds down this weekend, has become one of the most popular events and tourist attractions in Utah and requires lots of extra preparation from businesses and local governments that are profiting in a big way.

Last year's festival resulted in $59.6 million of statewide economic activity and brought in 29,027 out-of-state visitors, according to information compiled by the University of Utah's Bureau of Business and Economic Research for the Sundance Institute.

In recent years, overall attendance at the festival has been about 50,000 people, said Park City communications director Myles Rademan. "I'd say we're probably going to see that again this year."

Summit County pulled in the lion's share of the total overall revenue from last year's festival, raking in $52 million, or 86 percent of all economic activity.

In Summit County, visitors spent $28.6 million on lodging, $2 million on transportation, $8.5 million in discretionary income and $12.9 million on food.

Alan Issacson, analyst with the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said the festival has grown from $41.4 million in economic activity in 2004 to nearly $60 million last year. Attendance in 2004 was about 36,700, and by 2007 the number attending increased to 48,298 people.

The best year for the festival so far has been 2006, when 52,800 people attended, resulting in a statewide economic impact of $61.5 million. Rademan said this year could definitely be in those ranges.

What does it take to satisfy the needs of all those hungry festivalgoers? The answer: lots and lots of everything.

The head of Sysco Intermountain Food Services said that his company typically increases its order volume each year during the festival, when the volume is already 25 percent higher than normal.

"We add an additional 10 percent, because it seems to get bigger and bigger every year," said Tom Kesteloot, Sysco's president and chief executive officer. "We would ramp up our inventories of some 13,000 items."

Company employees also "scramble like crazy" to make sure celebrity types and their chefs have the exact high-end specialty items they want, Kesteloot said. "Whether it's fancy cheeses or hors d'oeuvres or some other specialty, we keep the airport kind of busy flying stuff in from all over."