Snowmass in Transition
Snowmass Village is going through a transition. Last fall the Town of Snowmass passed a group sales tax. With the passage of this tax, the Snowmass Village Resort Association agreed to have the Town take over this function. So we are busy setting up the transition. We thought this was going to give us more monies to work with and get the entire Town to participate instead of only part of it. Sounds like a good partnership.
The only problem is now the Town feels we need “new blood” and think instead of letting the lodging people work with the group sales effort, a new advisory committee should be set up with a lot of people, not involved in lodging. New blood can bring in new ideas. Maybe I should suggest this idea to the hospital and could help with a knee replacement. I might be able to bring in “new ideas”. Maybe the lodges can tell the hospital how to run, the restaurant community can run the roads department, the merchants can tell the bus company how to do business. New blood, new ideas!
They also plan to bring in an outside “consultant” to tell us who are clientele is. They are right; we only talk to our guests and groups on a daily basis. How would we know who they are? If the Town is able to come up with this “consultant” and a group of people, not in the lodging industry to make the group sales effort a huge success, they are true geniuses and Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton and every lodging company in the world will be calling them.
Does the Town really feel like the local lodging community is so incompetent or does this community have a few people with egos completely out of check?