I was copied by a local realtor on some ongoing email discussions concerning the ever-expanding number of “Visitor Guides” that are being published in Pagosa, and the stress that local merchants are feeling, trying to decide how to pay for ads in all these publications — and how to decide which publications are actually reaching their customers.
Two years ago, in a move meant to be helpful to the tourism industry, the Town Tourism Committee (TTC) decided to try and help solve this problem by sponsoring the “Official Pagosa Springs Visitor Guide,” a high quality, glossy publication similar on an expensive guide then being produced for the Telluride, Colorado tourism industry. At that time, the Telluride economy was just beginning its slide into economic difficulties — as was the Pagosa Springs economy. One idea behind the “Official Visitor Guide” was to focus the community’s market dollars into one single publication by subsidizing the publication with Town tax dollars.
This would be, then, the one key publication for marketing your business to visitors. Or at least, that was the concept.
 The TTC approached one of Pagosa’s local publishing companies, the Pagosa Springs SUN — a company that had, for many years published a couple of seasonal tourist guides as well as its weekly newspaper — and offered them a sweetheart deal:
The TTC would underwrite the printing of a new, glossy “Official Guide” and would also contract with the Chamber of Commerce to pay for the mailing of the new guide to anyone who requested one (whether or not the person ever had any serious plans to visit Pagosa.) The SUN would sell the advertising, design the guide, and have it printed out of town. (There are no printers of glossy magazines in Pagosa.) The SUN would then distribute additional copies locally — through motels, restaurants and so on — and would keep all the profits.
Rather than print one single annual guide, the TTC and the SUN agreed to do two seasonal guides: a Summer 2009 Guide and a Winter 2009/2010 Guide.
For some reason, the TTC decided not to put the project out to bid, even though the subsidy from the Town taxpayers was going to amount to maybe $100,000 including the cost of mailing the publication through the Chamber.
During the initial year, the SUN promoted its new “Official Guides” using ads in its weekly newspaper — and then utilized its seasoned sales staff and its existing advertiser base to build two truly impressive Pagosa Springs guides for 2009. The completed glossy guides had more pages than the Durango and Telluride visitor guides. The publications had more pages, in fact, than the Colorado state visitors guide.
And those many, many pages were, of course, paid for mainly by local business owners.
One small problem. Here in Pagosa Springs, we don’t have a very well developed “tourist trade” retail sector, like you might find in a more successful tourist town. In the town where I used to live, for example — Juneau, Alaska — almost the entire downtown consisted of tourist souvenir shops which serviced the 100,000 weekly visitors who spilled off the cruise ships and shopped their hearts out in a quaint former mining town turned state capital. Those shop owners made a bundle during the summer tourist season, and then closed up shop and headed south for the winter. (Mexico was a favorite spot, I understand, as was the Caribbean.)
Juneau’s downtown, in the winter, was pretty much a ghost town, but the merchants were able to make enough profit during the summer months to survive. To thrive, even.
If we contrast that with Pagosa Springs, we find a little Colorado mountain town that attracts maybe 3,000 visitors a week during the summer? And maybe half that number during a good week in the winter? (I don’t know the actual figures. For some reason, the Chamber of Commerce and the Town Tourism Committee have never published any accurate figures, as far as I know.)
This low number of tourists means that all our local businesses — except for hotels and motels, and a few rafting, hot air ballooning, and horseback riding companies — must cater to locals as well as tourists in order to survive. So we don’t see “souvenir shops” here, the way I saw them back in Juneau.
Tourists (historically, at least) love to shop. Here in Pagosa, they are limited to shopping at our ordinary, run of the mill stores, and eating at our ordinary, run of the mill restaurants. Those stores and restaurants must, of course, keep their prices reasonable — because they depend upon local customers as well.
Unfortunately, this means that our local merchants must market themselves to two fairly separate groups of customers: the local customers and the tourists. Here in Pagosa, in other words, we don't really have a "tourist industry" as such, but more like a "tourist-and-locals industry."
Ideally, then, a local business would like to advertise in a publication that is being picked up by both locals and visitors.
The TTC, however, with well-meant intentions, decided to invest a large amount of its annual budget subsidizing a glossy magazine that very few local residents will ever bother to pick up. They then decided to mail out this glossy guide — free of charge — to anyone requesting it and who didn't live here.
As far as I know, in spite of a $100,000 annual investment of taxpayer monies into the “Official Visitor Guides” no one has tracked the new publication to see if the people receiving it in their mailboxes in California, Texas, or Oklahoma, are in fact coming to Pagosa and bringing their guides with them. And from what I hear, the TTC’s expenditures for printing and mailing the “Official Visitor Guides” this year will be even higher than in 2009.
Things took a bit of a turn last December, when a certain local publisher (me) lodged a protest with the TTC and the Town Council, complaining that the Town was not allowing competing publishers to bid on the annual guides. (I also made the point that the Pagosa Springs Visitor Center was getting more foot traffic before the publication of the glossy annual guides — back during the years when the Chamber was instead mailing out a packet of cheaply printed brochures, each of which could easily fit in your pocket.)
The Town dismissed my protest, but promised that the 2011 Visitor Guides would be put out to bid — which they did do, this past spring, and the contract went to the locally-owned Cassio Group rather than the SUN. The owners of the Cassio Group, Mel and Darlene Cassio, are actually more active in Internet publishing than in print publishing — I believe they have produced only a handful of print publications here in Pagosa — but their proposal for linking the print publication to an extensive website won the hearts of the TTC board, and won them the 2011 Visitor Guide contract.
But the story gets more interesting, because the SUN has trademarked the name “Pagosa Springs Official Visitor Guide” and seems to be planning to publish its own summer and winter guides in 2011. I assume they will be called the "Pagosa Springs Official Visitor Guides"?
Imagine, then, that you are a local business person, trying to figure your advertising budget for 2011. The TTC is printing its own annual Visitor Guide that will be mailed out to thousands of potential visitors, but might not be distributed here locally. The SUN will be publishing two seasonal Visitor Guides that will be distributed locally, but might not be mailed out to anyone except SUN subscribers.
And I think I forgot to mention the new, free Pagosa Post magazine that now comes out once a month. And the SUN’s weekly paper. And the Pagosa Springs Dining Guide. And the numerous events during the year that publish their own printed programs, also supported by advertising — the Folk Festival, the Fiber Festival, the Folk 'n' Blues Festival, various theater productions... The list goes on.
How in the world does a Pagosa business advertise to all its potential customers — locals and visitors — without going bankrupt?
Help!
Read Part Two... |