CRESTED BUTTE — Colorado Ski Country USA is eliminating its print and radio advertising and laying off five marketing and communications employees — one-third of its staff — due to budget cutbacks stemming from Vail Resorts’ decision to leave the trade group.
Dues from Vail Resorts’ ski areas — Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone and Breckenridge — contributed almost half of Ski Country’s budget, officials said as they gathered here for their annual meeting, the first without Vail representatives present.
“It’s been a dream job,” said John Urdi, outgoing director of marketing for Colorado Ski Country. His last day is July 15. “Obviously my position is not needed because we’re not doing as much in the advertising realm,” he said.
Vail Resorts announced two weeks ago it was pulling out of Ski Country due to due to “philosophical differences” concerning the trade group’s role as both a public policy advocate and marketer for winter resorts. Vail Resorts had pressured the organization to focus on its public policy role, leaving marketing to individual resorts.
The cutbacks give Vail Resorts much of what it wanted — a much-reduced marketing effort — without being a member of the group or paying dues.
“Vail is going to benefit,” said Tom Jankovsky, Ski Country’s board president and the CEO of Sunlight Mountain Resort in Glenwood Springs. “I wouldn’t call them freeloaders. Instead, I’ll say they’re going to benefit from what we do.”
Rob Perlman, Ski Country’s outgoing president, said other member resorts have decided to remain in the organization, paying the same dues they paid the past year despite losing much of the marketing component those dollars paid for. Dues are based on skier visits.
“Frankly, they all have indicated a strong desire to stay part of the trade organization,” Perlman said.
Vail Resorts’ withdrawal leaves the Aspen Skiing Co. the largest operating company in the group. David Bellack, Ski Country’s vice chairman and a senior vice president and attorney for the Aspen Skiing Co., said the SkiCo had no interest in leaving.
“We think it’s a good organization and good for our industry and our community and our company,” Bellack said.
The cutbacks mean Ski Country will discontinue its advertising campaign in magazines such as National Geographic Adventure, Ski, Skiing, Powder and Snowboarder, and on XM and Sirius satellite radio networks.
Instead, Perlman said, the group will focus its marketing efforts on electronic marketing. That includes using its own Web site to promote visitors, targeting newsletters to recipients in its database and using paid and unpaid means to try to optimize its appearance on search engines when Web surfers look for skiing and snowboarding sites, Perlman said.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Jankovsky said. “We’ll be as effective as we can be.”
He noted that Vail Resorts had sought even deeper cuts: “They didn’t want a Web site....They wanted marketing to end.”
Bellack said the cuts Ski Country made were the same ones the company had offered to Vail Resorts in negotiations with the company— a move that would have let member resorts pay less in dues if Vail Resorts had stayed in the organization.
“As their requests went beyond that, we collectively agreed as an organization that to shrink more was going to render us ineffective.”
Ski Country officials said they hope the state tourism board will pick up some of the marketing efforts the trade group had previously undertaken, and they’re hopeful that Vail Resorts will return to the organization, as other companies, including the SkiCo, have done when they pulled out in the past.
Vail Resorts joins the tiny ski areas of Hesperus, in Durango, and Kendall Mountain, in Silverton, as the only ski and snowboard areas that are not members of Ski Country.
dfrey@aspendailynews.com
