Raelene Davis has promoted Utah skiing for 25 years

SALT LAKE CITY — The job was presented to Raelene Davis as a "stepping stone." Now, 25 years later, it has proven to be an uphill run in a downhill industry.

For a quarter century now, Davis has been promoting and marketing through Ski Utah what has become recognized worldwide as the "Greatest Snow On Earth," some of the best skiing and snowboarding and 13 of the world's finest resorts.

Credit Davis, in part, with getting the word out, not only locally and nationally, but around the world.

Newly married and returning to Utah from a job in Washington, D.C., with the Department of Interior, she answered a local newspaper ad in 1985 for a job opening at Ski Utah, the marketing arm for Utah resorts. Her qualifications were based around photojournalism.

The money wasn't great, but the title was impressive.

"Vice president," she laughed.

"Of course, there were only four people in the office."

The opportunity to work at Ski Utah was attractive, especially the charge to work on its range of publications. And, she enjoyed skiing. As a youngster, she learned to ski at a small area near Vernal named Grizzly Ridge.

When Davis signed on in 1985, skier visits topped 2.4 million. Last year, the total visits counted was 4.2 million.

Despite the obvious selling points, promoting Utah skiing was not always easy. Money, she remembered, was tight. The budget in the beginning was around $1 million, which was no match for the "$18-million-gorilla" to the east — Colorado.

"Our biggest market in 1985 was Southern California. Funny, but it's the same today. It's still our biggest market. But, today, we're doing huge things back East. We couldn't reach that market when I started because we didn't have the money," she said.

"We've also made great inroads into the international market. In the late 1980s, we joined in a conglomerate with other ski-area states and marketed in the United Kingdom and Australia, primarily, but then in Germany and South America. We all worked under one banner and in one booth to start. It made marketing internationally possible. When we started, our international market was zero. Today, it's 8 percent of our market."

Another challenge has been staying abreast of the rapidly changing communication industry, which, again, wasn't easy in the beginning.