Travel and tourism.

• Position: Industry Outlook - Interview

Though 2009 proved tough for Utah's travel and tourism industry, leaders remain cautiously optimistic going into 2010. Our panel of experts discussed some of the issues the industry is facing, including marketing changes and declining corporate travel. The group also discussed the trends of last-minute bookings, service-focused travel and "voluntourism." And though the industry is experiencing some setbacks, cooperation efforts among the industry's varied leaders are keeping the state's travel and tourism industry moving toward success.

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How is Utah's travel and tourism industry doing considering today's economy?

VON DER ESCH: We are cautiously optimistic that we have hit bottom and we are starting to go back up again. I think this last year has been interesting in that it was the first time you wouldn't make any blanket statement about tourism--whether it's up or down--because the state is really reflecting different visitation in a more dramatic way than I think we've ever seen. By that I mean our partners to the south, in the gateway communities and around the national parks, had a very good year.

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I was looking at visitation at Bryce Canyon--it was up 16 percent last year. Moab was up about 13 percent. Zion Park was up probably closer to 4 percent. So our national parks and state parks visitations were up considerably. However, in the northern parts of the state visitation rates were a bit softer. And then there is no doubt that the convention meetings business was hit differently last year. Overall, I think we are seeing a trend upward.

RACKER: Last year was definitely a down year [in Utah Valley]. Our visitor center numbers were down slightly and we know that the hotel occupancies were down roughly about 3 to 4 percent and tourism tax dollars were also down. But, we are optimistic. We receive a lot of inquiries for information from people wanting to travel here. We know our state parks and our national monument down there--Timpanogos Cave and Utah Lake State Park and Camp Floyd and the Stagecoach Inn State Park--they were actually up. Overall we are optimistic and hopeful that we have hit the bottom and that this next year we'll see some trends with it starting to move up.

MALONE: I also think we've found the bottom now. I think last year was a very challenging year--not only on the occupancy side but even more so now on the rate side. And obviously we see the pattern changing in terms of spending. Everyone is looking for a deal and that runs from our luxury product to our economy product--it's not just one part of the market that is experiencing that trend. So we feel as though we've found our new level. And I think we are looking to make incremental gains moving forward now. Our numbers this past winter are pretty well flat to last year, so we think this is our new starting point.

BECK: I think for [Salt Lake] it's kind of a tale of two cities. I think we clearly can see the bottom, but we don't feel we've hit the bottom. We are projecting 2010 to be down 3 to 4 percent over 2009. I think that we look at the year in two different ways. In 2008, we had our second biggest booking year for future conventions in the 25-year history of the Salt Lake CVB. In 2009, we were about 80 percent of where we were in 2008. So if you look at the future and the strength of our product as we are out there booking in years 2014, 2015 and 2016, we still have very strong traction. I think that is why we are so optimistic--we clearly see the bottom and we see that there is a lot of potential for the future because of the phenomenal recognition that we are now receiving as a state.

For us the real big impact comes in the reduced corporate travel that comes into Salt Lake, which is a little different than some of the outlying areas in that we rely so heavily on the corporate transient market to really sustain a lot of what goes on in the downtown area. And the corporate group meetings--that is where we really have seen the big change. And it's not that we don't see some of it returning in 2010, but it's still going to be a brave new world out there for the corporate market.

RIDDLE: In Davis County, we have had tips and we've had downs. Overall the message is that even though our occupancy was down by 6.2 percent for 2009, that doesn't compare with the state occupancies, which was down by 7.1. So, yes, we were down but we could have been a lot worse.

Antelope Island State Park had a fabulous year in 2009. The park actually saw growth of 5 percent in visitors and it realized an 8 percent growth in revenue--we were absolutely thrilled about that growth. We had our Antelope Island Balloon and Kite Stampede, which brought out 20,000-plus people all by itself, which for our county is a pretty big event.

From our meetings and convention component, our sales team actually met its goal and actually exceeded the goal that we had in place for 2009. What we found is people were actually willing to talk about booking of multi years. So we had many of our clients that booked three-year contracts with us which, compared to a year before, they didn't even want to talk to us--so that's good for us.

Our occupancy, as has been mentioned, is certainly something that has great room for improvement, but it could have been a lot worse. And where we are situated with Hill Air Force Base, we...