The Recession Claims a Resort – RIP Tamarack

I first saw the news on Twitter this past Sunday that Tamarack Resort was finally hitting the end of their financing and having to shut down all operations as of the closing of their lifts today. Now that today has come, I find it very strange to browse through Tamarack’s website and while I see that they have done a good job of noting their closing throughout the site, they still have left all of their site’s content up aside from a couple of PDF links on their home page. I almost of feel like I’m going to an open casket viewing at a funeral…it’s a bit surreal.

Up until now, it has been interesting watching the impact of the current economic issues on the ski resort industry, surprisingly there are resorts that are having a banner year. However, it appears that most of the industry is off by a good chunk and is cutting where possible so that they can withstand what looks to be at least another year of lowered revenues. Personally, I’m fortunate to be working for a company that has it’s finances in control and isn’t burdened with mountains of debt like Tamarack was. Even so, it still hasn’t been smooth sailing as there were a number of people, including a co-worker in my department, let go just over a month ago.

In spite of this, I still think that the winter resort business is in good shape even as our economy bumps along. I know many people that have managed to carve out time and money to take their winter ski or snowboard trip even though it looked like it wouldn’t happen this year. The airfares that were through the roof to start the season have started to come back down. And, truth be told, there’s still nothing like hitting the slopes, whetherit’s an epic powder day or just a quick cruise around the mountain.

In the meantime, RIP Tamarck.

Game On!

It’s been snowing all day and we’re all hoping that this will wind up being a big Utah powder dump. That’s because it’s  time for us to dial in our game and get ready for what we’re hoping will be a Holiday crowd of happy skiers and riders. I’m feeling a bit pessimistic as I look at the current economic news of  doom and gloom that’s hanging over our country and know that it will impact business at the resort. A great summary of current trends in the mountain resort business can be found the Industy News article, “Down but not Out: That’s the Latest Snapshot of North American Bookings,” and as you can tell from the title, it’s not the brightest outlook.

This Fall, I’ve been pushing harder than ever at my job: deploying emails, kicking our blog into high gear, polishing the resort’s presence on a slew of social media sites, employing a variety of social media monitoring techniques, getting our video library up to par along with the usual chunk of tasks I have at the start of every ski season. In addition, it feels like I’m always thinking of something I should try, grabbing my laptop and plugging away at it until the wee hours…I know much of it won’t amount to anything in terms of business revenue, but I know it would gnaw at me if I didn’t.

The big picture tells me that without snow, there’s not all that much I can do to impact visits, because without snow our business doesn’t even open. So, now that snow has come, I’m going to get out, make some more turns, try to forget about the struggle at hand for awhile and hopefully “they will come.” And if it does turns out that not as people come this winter, then I guess it’s just more turns for me.

Photo credit: jaiel