Travel & tourism.

• Position: Industry Outlook - Interview

Industry insiders point to encouraging signs that travel and tourism is on the rebound in Utah. With multiple new luxury properties, Utah has become the go-to place for international travelers, and co-operative marketing dollars are helping rural communities get their message to targeted audiences.

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We'd like to give a special thank you to Mark White, vice president of Visit Salt Lake, for moderating the discussion, and to Holland I Hart for hosting the event.

How would you describe the current state of the tourism industry in Utah?

GRIFFALL: Optimistic.

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RACKER: A little bit more optimistic than last year.

VON DER ESCH: We're optimistic about how we are trending compared to our competitive set. Last year, the prediction was by U.S. Travel that growth would be about 1.5 to 2 percent, and we're trending higher. Our national parks visitations have been trending higher than some of the other states, our state parks visitation has certainly been trending higher than other states, and our international travel has been opened up extensively because of the direct flight to Paris, and we'll be resuming the flight to Tokyo. All in all, the projection for this last year was a 4 percent increase all around. So we have a lot to be excited about for the upcoming year.

WHITE: In Salt Lake County, our hotels experienced an 8 percent increase in occupancy over 2009, and we had 9 percent more leisure travelers. But although the occupancy rates are increasing, the hotel rates were actually down 5 percent. We're seeing an increase in demand a bit; but the optimism among our hotel operators and our suppliers is not strong enough that they're ready to raise the rates yet. So we're going in the right direction, but we have a long way to go.

MALONE: We do a snapshot looking out for six months forward in terms of what's on the books at various times, and our latest reports are showing that our occupancy is double-digit up looking forward for the next six months compared to last year. We're real excited about that. However, it looks like our rate's about 8 percent below last year at that same time.

RACKER: There may not be as much money brought to the bottom line, but the jobs are being created and people are being employed. And hopefully the economy, as it heats up, rates will be able to go up and it will be a more profitable business.

MALONE: There's basically a behavioral change as well that's occurred: Our customers are shopping around. And especially in the luxury brand, which was not the case years ago. People aren't bashful about picking up a phone and calling competitive properties and comparing rates and playing one against the other in order to get the best deal.

RAFFERTY: There's a lack of urgency, too, where they know there's going to be a room available. They're playing everybody against each other. As a consumer, it's a great time to travel.

RIDDLE: In Davis County we're finding our occupancy is slightly down. But the impression is that Salt Lake's rates have dropped and some of our business has moved south, unfortunately. However, our average daily rate has stayed consistent; in fact, we're just ever so slightly up.

New luxury properties have opened in the Park City area. How is that impacting tourism?

MALONE: That may have a connection to why our rates are as competitive as they are. Probably five years ago one of our shortcomings was that we just didn't have flagship luxury brands. We had Stein Eriksen Lodge, which has, for many years, been a great product and great partner in the community. But in the last few years with adding Waldorf, St. Regis, and now the Montage, it puts a lot of luxury product in the marketplace. Some of that obviously is competition in terms of the leisure side, but there's also a lot of competition on the business side and the group side.

VON DER ESCH: And it's globally branding us. There's no question these are global brands. We just received word that we're the number one destination for luxury travel in 2011, which is a designation we haven't gotten before.

CAMERON: I represent two different perspectives in this group: one is that we represent the business travel segment as opposed to the leisure travel segment. The other is that we primarily book outbound travel rather than inbound travel. We have found that our bookings are actually up 20 percent year over year. The dollar amount is up 20 percent, the transactions are only up about 10 percent.

We're actually seeing a higher average cost per trip of about 10 percent this year compared to last year. That's primarily because the airlines have been able to get some pricing power that the rest of the folks haven't been able to.

GRIFFALL: Foreign travel has actually been very strong. The Utah brand is extremely strong in the international markets. For example, the Amangiri Resort--there are only two in North America, and one's in Jackson and one's in Utah. There's a huge luxury market in the Asian countries, and there are many people who will travel to no place other than an Aman Resort. So that says a lot about Southern Utah, particularly where they're located, out in the middle of what we would call nowhere, but it happens to be a gorgeous part of our natural environment.

Are we seeing continued positive results from the Life Elevated campaign?

GRIFFALL: We are still working at breaking down long-term perceptions of travel to Utah. I've been in the business long enough to know that 35...