Experience, technology among social trends affecting tourism industry.

• Author: Kretschman, Bob
• Position: [TOURISM]

For Surface Creek Winery owner Jim Durr, the key to successful tourism promotion is to listen to customers.

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"The tourists will show you the way," says Durr, a member of the Colorado Tourism Board. "Experiences are what you offer, but what you're selling are the stories that people take home."

Experience-seeking travelers comprise one of the social trends that travel-culture expert Daniel Levine says will influence Colorado's tourism industry in the next decade. Levine is executive director of the New York-based Avant-Guide Institute, a guidebook publisher and consultant on cultural trends.

Levine told the 2008 Colorado Governor's Tourism Conference in Beaver Creek in October that several trends are significantly affecting the way the tourism industry serves customers. Travelers want unique experiences that they can describe to their friends back home, he said.

"It's about brag-ability. It's about telling people something you've done that they haven't done," he said. "In the travel industry, think about what experience you can give people that they can't get anyplace else. The bottom line is about surprising and delighting your customer."

Agritourism, a fast-growing industry in rural Colorado that promotes farms, ranches, and food and fiber production as tourist attractions, illustrates the experience trend, says Doug Caskey, executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board. He said tourist demand is growing for culinary and agricultural attractions.

"People will actually pay money to go to a farm, a cattle ranch, a vineyard--and work," Caskey said.

Several important trends affecting tourism have their roots in technology, Levine said. The "tyranny of transparency," as Levine called it, is the fast rise of travel-oriented websites that let users post reviews of hotels and other attractions. The free-wheeling commentary on such sites generates fear among many tourist-dependent businesses.

"It's taken the control of how we image ourselves...