Ed Miklus: Time for leadership
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Let’s talk about Whitefish — and no, not that tasty Jewish food delicacy. Whitefish is a small town, population 6,300 on 4.4 square miles, in northwestern Montana. So what’s the big deal about Whitefish? Well, it has a ski mountain with 3,000 skiable acres, 2,353 vertical feet of terrain, a season pass that costs $580, and daily lift tickets that cost $67. But if you stay for a week, skiing will cost only $50 per day, and a ski-in, ski-out king hotel room will set you back $840 for the week.
More important, SKI Magazine ranks Whitefish ahead of Steamboat. Pretty neat, huh? So what does that tell us? Are we a resort going down instead of going up? Is our major economic engine sputtering and about to stall? What effect does our status as a resort have on business, commerce and our home values (see the Trailhead Lodge auction)?
So instead of standing around re-arranging deck chairs, here are a few suggestions, in priority order, that may help preserve our economic future and our viability as a community:
■ Change our form of city government to a mayoral system so we can engender at least a modicum of leadership in our community.
■ All disparate business/self-interest groups should fold their pup tents and join one big tent, the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association. There is strength and influence in numbers. The Chamber should then change its name to the Yampa Valley Chamber of Commerce with a concomitant revision of its mission statement to include all business and commercial interests in Routt County.
■ With the two above items in place, establish an on-site meeting with Intrawest’s big mahufta, Bill Jensen. It would be nice to know what the elephant that’s sitting on our living room couch plans to do.
■ Invest in some MBA marketing whiz kids to reinvigorate our authentic unique Western brand and come up with some new, creative and innovative marketing strategies instead of pulling the same old stale, staid stuff off the shelf and hoping for a different result or deciding on the wonderfully brilliant idea of raising lift ticket prices in the middle of a lousy ski season. This also applies to the air service program/Local Marketing District. You know we’re in trouble when at the LMD’s recent open house, one of the board members said, “We’re doing just fine.” What?
■ Take a good, hard, objective look at our pricing structure. What do you think it costs for an East Coast family of four with a couple of teenagers to spend a ski week in Steamboat — $8,000 or more?
■ Refer to our visitors as guests. Inculcate the “guest philosophy” in all our resort employees. Initiate a comprehensive top-to-bottom review of our guests’ experience from the time they arrive to the time they leave, be it by air, car or horse-drawn wagon. All who have any possibility of interacting with our guests should be part of the review: airport folks, shuttle drivers, merchants, police, resort staff — you get the idea.
Absent taking some bold aggressive actions, some of which are suggested above, to start to move us up the ladder of resort rankings instead of expressing satisfaction being in the top 15, we can always change our name to “Lox Springs” and hope for the best.
Ed Miklus
Steamboat Springs
Comments
mark hartless 5 months, 3 weeks ago
I passed through there this summer. Beautiful from Flathead Lake to Kalispell to Whitefish.
Can't compare Whitefish to Steamboat. They are a bunch of libertarian rednecks that don't have a clue. Any success they might see is sure to be temporary. Steamboat's advanced culture will always exceed that sort of thing. We are smarter, more sophisticated.
You guys just stay put, I'll go check them out and bring back any news in the spring... summer...
Seriously. It's cold there. They don't get the snow we do; less of it and NOT powder. They get some dreary weather. It gets dark at like 3 PM. And did I mention it's really coooooooooold.
Scott Wedel 5 months, 3 weeks ago
And how is a mayor going to change those issues? SB already gives Chamber whatever they want. They got a sales tax to subsidize flights to bring in 145,000 tourists and yet end up having only 115,000 or so seats.
How is a mayor going to change what Ski Corps charges for ski passes and lift tickets? What hotels charge for lodging and so on? Talk about an explosion of the size and scope of city government!
As a business, Intrawest is supposed to give up millions in season pass revenues to become more popular locally? Vail's Buddy Pass is absolutely brilliant because they sell so many to occasional skiers that they still get good revenue per day skied on a pass. Quite likely that, on average, SB pass holders pass about the same per skied day as a Buddy Pass holder.
SB decided to go upscale. Intrawest bought the ski area at a price that requires relatively expensive lift tickets and ski passes to service their debts. Lots of fancy construction to match and create lots of opportunities for exclusive vacations. That has sort of missed the post boom tourism market.
And why in the world should government, in particular a mayor, be put in charge of the local economy?
Harry Thompson 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Scott, are you kidding? SB decided to go upscale. You need to get out of town more often. Go look at the upscale resorts.
The reason that we need to go to a mayoral system is very evident to anyone who really pays attention to the waste, and direction that this and other councils have taken the city.
If we are really serious about remaining a top notch resort, it will take a concerted effort of better governance by the city, more participation from the ski corp, chamber, merchants and even the locals.
mark hartless 5 months, 3 weeks ago
I agree with Scott that a mayor wouldn't likely change anything.
I am, however, somewhat perplexed by his closing statement about government being put in charge of an economy. That's not because I don't whole-heartedly agree. It's just quite curious considering the source.
As a proud democrat Scott's questioning why government should be put in charge of an economy is a real knee-slapper. One heck-of-a knee slapper indeed. Thanks for that laugh, Scott.
I would also caution that this growing propensity to get some individual to "just fix it" by vesting them with great authority is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS sentiment; one that seems to be growing nationwide. One need look no further than Egypt to know the results are extremely undesirable.
As someone who has had extensive dealings with a town that DOES have a mayor I can testify that the waste, corruption, red tape, stupidity and poor decion-making will not stop with a mayor. It will not stop with a governor or prince or king.
What will stop it is when the people, through intelligently voting, put leadership in place that has a conscience and well-grounded convictions about the proper (and improper) role of government and retians their convictions when temptations and pressures arise to the contrary.
To the extent that we have bad local government it is due to the local electorate's willingness to accept it, condone it, even to promote and advocate such governance. Usually for the purposes of retaining or promoting their personal feifdoms, programs, favors or powers above the needs of the community at large. In short, the character found in government (at any level) is a reflection of the character of the electorate. So the majority of us must like what we see. I am clearly, and proudly, not in that majority.
Scott Wedel 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Harry, I am not saying SB succeeded, but between recently constructed lodging and the direction of the ski area, they went for higher paying tourists as compared to attracting more families or increasing midrange tourism options.. SB was marketed as being comparable to Vail or Aspen, but at a currently lower price that will rise to those levels. And so just about everything recently built was priced at the top end of the local market.
Mark, Coming from someone that posted: So there's not ONE DEMOCRAT that will protect law-abiding citizens from criminals?
Why do I find that symbolic?
I am not surprised that you think Democrats are also communists that believe in total government control of the economy. The knee slapper is how you have such a distorted view of the actual political beliefs of others.
Robert Dippold 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Ed, I appreciated the post.
You stated the word leadership in your headline and I believe that word says it all. By definition a leader is an individual not a group. There is an expression that says "If everyone is in charge then no one is in charge." Whether it is a council system or a mayoral system, some person, ONE person, needs to be the leader. In the council system it has evolved to the City Manager in most places. From what I read this was one of the problems with the last city manager. He was not a leader out in the community. In the mayoral system it is obviously the mayor.
Final Decision by committee is a cluster. This last statement is absolutely no reflection on the city council as individuals or how they work together as a group.
mark hartless 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Scott, The "so there's not one DEMOCRAT..." comment was a satyrical twist on the EXACT SAME comment about republicans just above it on the same thread. Which one of those comments is inappropriate? Which one is the knee-slapper? Which one was sincere? Which one was the joking response intended to show the ridiculousness of the previous comment?
And how would someone as blinded by hypocricy as you seem to be on this issue, recognize the differewnce anyway?
Did you even NOTICE THAT COMMENT ????? I sure didn't read any righteous indignation from you about that persons comment; about how lumping republicans or insinuating that they are the only ones who pick on the people; about how the suggestion was that democrats were not capable of such things. Nope, didn't read any thoughts from you on that... wonder why? Could it be you are one-sided? Probably because you are acting here like a hypocrite of the highest order.
Again, thanks for yet another laugh, and for demonstrating to all just how and who is "out of touch"...
Blog entries
Ed is right on by fjcinss 5 months, 3 weeks ago
Requires free registration
Posting comments requires a free account and verification.
Or login with:
OpenID