The Buzz: Delaying the off-season

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyoming -
More events won’t solve the inevitable lull, but they help.

The Teton Wellness Festival, which is given a lot of attention in this edition, has become an annual boon to local commerce during a time when visitor numbers drop dramatically, according to event organizers and tourism representatives.

These days the Wellness Fest counts around 1,800 to 2,000 participants, and as many as half of them or more come from outside of Teton County, said event director Pamela Ofstein. The visitors tend to come from around the region, from Idaho, Utah and Montana, Ofstein said. Many will come from Lander, or up from the Rock Springs area. More to the point, the majority of visitors coming from outside the county will book rooms when many hotels and motels would otherwise be empty.

But the fest isn’t the only hope for a final economic lunge before the off-season.
While the so-called shoulder season – the gulf of time between the peaks of summer and winter tourism – continues to be a painful period for the valley’s retail, lodging and restaurant industries, a focus on more annual destination events could help delay the morbid commercial lull, said Tim O’Donoghue, exectuive director of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

Photo: A Roundup employee closes Monday. The retailer will soon close for good by Ben Cannon

“It’s about continuing the fall economy,” O’Donoghue said, referring not to the slump usually observed as the autumn snows fall, but to brisk trade not uncommonly seen on sunny days during an Indian Summer.
The off-season does not have a definable beginning or end, as O’Donoghue pointed out, yet many say it sinks in just after the Fall Arts Festival, which happened to end this year on Sept. 20.

But the Fall Arts Fest was followed the next weekend by the Jackson Hole Fall Classic, a youth soccer tournament that brought in an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people, an organizer said. The tournament has been held for three years and continues to grow, providing an economic buoy to local businesses.

“Things normally start to tail off after the Arts Fest,” O’Donoghue said, “but this year was the highest number of participants in that soccer tournament, and businesses probably did better that weekend than in previous years.”

Sales and use tax numbers, which, according to O’Donoghue, are as good of a metric as any to measure commercial activity, are not available for September but should be ready within the next week. O’Donoghue declined to predict how September sales and use tax numbers would stand up against previous years, but said that many retail businesses, with the exception of high-end stores, have reported recent business as fair or even good.

And a marathon in the works for next year could become another key boost to area businesses before the off-season hits.

The tentatively named Jackson Hole Marathon could potentially draw thousands to the valley, but race organizers have a lot of hurdles to clear before the event is a go, said Jay Batchen of Teton County, Idaho. Batchen and his wife, elite ultra-runner Lisa Smith-Batchen, have staged races near Grand Targhee Resort and elsewhere, and hope to bring Jackson Hole its first marathon.

“You always hope you’d bring [thousands of people] in,” Batchen said. “But obviously in the first year you need to have some growing pains.”

Teton Wellness Institute representatives hope the marathon would dovetail into Destination Wellness, a Chamber initiative that includes the Wellness Fest, but Batchen said planning the marathon around practical considerations might have to take precedence.

Yet even while the number of quiet weeks deeper into the fall far outnumber the handful of planned events that could attract more visitors, Jackson Hole may have capped one of its largest draws.

The Wellness Festival, a marquee attraction for the fall or anytime, has moved its two most popular keynote presentations this year from Snow King to the Center for the Arts,

“We have almost outgrown what’s available,” said Ofstein, the event director.
“There’s no convention center, there’s no way to grow this festival.” JHW


PERMALINK:
The Buzz: Delaying the off-season | Planet JH News Article: General News

Leave a Comment