Northern Utah.

What's happening in the tourism industry, and where do you see that going for the remainder of the year?

TOLIVER: On the tourism front, things are looking really strong in our two counties. We've held really strong because of the impact of Hill Air Force Base and some of the government travel that we do, as well as the fact that we are a very affordable destination with a lot of great venues and facilities. So we haven't seen the big downturn in Weber County that some of our partners across the region have seen.

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RIDDLE: Tourism is alive and well in Davis County. We have seen visitation increases in 2010. We saw a 4.3 percent increase. Of course, this follows off of 6.47 percent for last year.

Regarding meetings and conventions, we found in the second and third quarter of 2010, people were really kind of pulling back and taking a wait-and-see attitude. Fourth quarter rocked. We had phenomenal results in the fourth quarter. And the first quarter is looking equally as strong, and so we are very optimistic about what 2011 will bring. And a great announcement--Home2Suites is opening up in March, which will increase our hotel inventory. We'll go from 150 sleeping rooms to over 1,600 sleeping rooms.

DEJONG: Western States Lodging is the management company of the facility that will be opening up in Ogden as well. So we're booming, and they're looking for other places as well. Their retirement community, Legacy Village, just opened up and, if you haven't been there, it's amazing.

As far as the conference center goes, last year we were just trying to get people in and a lot of people were canceling at the last minute. It was the type of thing where businesses budgeted for it and then they realized at the last minute, "We've got to pull back and save some money." This year we're seeing a lot of people saying, "We have the funds now. We can spend that money to go forward," and there's definitely an increase in bookings in the conference center. The hotel side is booming--we are full to capacity. The government sector, business sector, leisure, is booming. Lots of people already calling about Lagoon from Idaho, so it's a great time to be in this industry, and I'm just excited to see it take off.

How is Utah's skiing industry doing?

TOLIVER: We have actually seen at our resorts this year an increase in skier days, which I believe is a trend happening across the state. The early snow certainly helped this year. It gets people in the right frame of mind early on, so they plan their vacations in the amount of time we hope for rather than waiting until January like last year. So it's been a good season.

RIDDLE: Davis County is in a great location. We like to market ourselves as one destination, 10 resorts, because you can stay centrally within our community and shoot up north or south.

CURTIS: I would like to highlight Antelope Island and what an effect it has made on the county and the things that are going on there. In particular the Layton Marathon, which just started and is the only Olympic-qualifier marathon race in the state. It is also the only marathon that, if a world record is made, it's a qualifier. The first seven miles go across Antelope Island, then they go down the causeway and into Layton, through Syracuse. It is another recreational draw.

RIDDLE: Antelope Island has attracted a lot of international attention. We get so many media writers from all over the world that are brought to us by our Utah Office of Tourism. Antelope Island is a 28,000-acre island with wildlife out in the middle of America's dead sea. It's truly remarkable. We're seeing articles all over the country in all different languages. Our goal is going to be in the next six to 12 months to make the visitor experience from an international perspective a lot more favorable in providing some collateral material that's printed out in multiple languages that will support the marketing brochures that we have in multiple languages.

As locals sometimes, we're not as excited about going to Antelope Island. I'm hoping that perception is changing, because when I first started talking about Antelope Island, so many people would come up after and say, "I've never been there." I don't hear that so much anymore. Now I hear people talking about taking friends or their family that are visiting in the community. We did an economic impact assessment, and we came up with $11.7 million as the economic impact that Antelope Island brings to our community.

How is the retail sector faring?

BARNES: It's picking up. Year over year, same store sales are up, which is a good thing. And they were up in the fourth quarter, which is really good. I'm talking more about from a broad retail sense, not anything particular to do with us. But our customers, both big box and small independent gift stores--their sales are increasing. We have seen quite a bit of contraction with our small independent gift stores, though. A lot of them are closing down, unfortunately.

HARDMAN: As I've talked to most of the general retailers, they saw a significant improvement this holiday season over a year ago, of course, comparing it to the bottom of the barrel. But many of them were looking at a 4 to 6 percent increase over last year. The mall in Weber County also saw an increase overall store for store, and even our friends at Wal-Mart had a great holiday season.

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We also have had six new retailers move to the downtown Ogden area, most of them small Utah-based companies, with the exception of Black and Decker. Recreation Outlet is the biggest of the regional stores, and they're finding great success. They had a fantastic holiday season.

What is happening at Falcon Hill National Aerospace Research Park?

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