Jasper in January to go on with or without ski consortium

As the winter season slowly comes to an end, the future of the Jasper Ski Consortium remains a little ambiguous as the direction of the newly incorporated Jasper Destination Marketing Corporation is slowly revealed. But what does it all mean for the dearly beloved Jasper in January?

The Jasper Ski Consortium, a mix of Jasper hotels plus Marmot Basin, was established to provide a cohesive, effective marketing program for all members.

“We’re targeting the skier and snowboarder market because it’s a very identifiable target market and that’s what’s important. As good marketers know, the more narrow you can make your focus, the better,” said Brian Rode, vice president of sales and marketing for Marmot Basin, adding that this market was where the “lion’s share” of business comes from during the winter months and is thus an important aspect for all businesses in Jasper, not just members of the consortium.

“We’re all in this together,” said Rode. “People want to come to a place where they are going to stay in nice accommodation, they’re going to ski, they’ve got a nice place to eat, they’re going to go shopping, they’re going to experience nice community with beautiful surrounding. All of that makes up the ski product.”

One marketing strategy of the ski consortium is Jasper in January, which was originally held in 1989 to celebrate Marmot Basin’s 25th anniversary by offering discounted lift tickets in conjunction with deals on hotel rooms. That first year, the number of skier and snowboarder visits quadrupled over a nine-day period.

However, according to Rode, it was not just the discounts that resulted in what he calls a wildly and tremendously successful event.

“The discount was part of it,” he said, “But there was a very large community involvement in hosting a number of events and activities in Jasper, not just planning and hosting, [but] the community helped to spread the word that we were having this festival and when somebody says, ‘What’s the festival?’ It’s a great price on coming to Jasper and we’ve got some special events and activities planned for you and that’s what happened.”

Given this success, it’s not surprising that the future of the event after the demise of the consortium is a highly contentious issue.

While there is no official word on the future of the consortium, the fact no funding is budgeted to contract Jasper Commerce and Tourism for the marketing of the 2009/2010 event leads to many unanswered questions.

In Rode’s eyes it’s not about the consortium disbanding, but instead a morphing into the newly incorporated Jasper Destination Marketing Corporation.

The Jasper Destination Marketing Corporation (JDMC)

Established in January of last year, the JDMC is a group of hotels that began charging a two per cent destination marketing fee on all hotel rooms at the beginning of 2008, which will be pooled and used to market Jasper as a year-round destination.

Currently, the JDMC consists solely of hotels, but following their meeting last week board members will be recruiting other business sectors, including restaurants and attractions, to begin contributing to the marketing fund, according to Amanda Robinson, chair of the JDMC board.

Robinson assumed her title after the JDMC was incorporated last month and the board of directors, which consists of Elizabeth Bahner, Steven Watters, Chad Gulevich, D’arcy Carroll, Doug Goss, and Shawnee Janes-Wilson, was decided on at a meeting on Feb. 26.

While still in its infancy and without a vision or mission statement, Robinson said the overall aim for the corporation is to “build the marketing opportunities for the destination.”

So then, for people such as Rode, there is a hope that the JDMC will “take over the responsibility of marketing [the ski product]... it’s an opportunity for those of us who benefit from [the ski product] in the winter, which is everyone in town, to have a more effective group marketing, to which Marmot Basin has every intention of contributing.”

Though Rode is just one part of the current ski consortium, his opinion is that there will be little need for it once there is “something bigger and better” to absorb and make the marketing effort year-round to offer up all of the products and services in Jasper, rather than just targeting the ski and snowboarder market.

Chad Gulevich, Mount Robson Inn owner and president of the Jasper Hotel Association, echoed Rode’s sentiments and said he thought the JDMC would do well to take over the responsibility of the Ski Consortium.

Both Rode and Robinson said they believed it would be important to ensure that there would be no gap where Jasper was without a destination marketing body, be it in summer or winter, but there would be a transition period.

“We have to continue to market and promote, we can not lose a step to our competition,” Rode said.

For Robinson, the main focus at this stage is to get the corporation “up and running” but she also said it is important to “make sure we don’t let anything fall through the cracks [and] keep this destination on the map.”

“The next step is to sign a trust and governance agreement with the Alberta Hotel Association for them to become the trustee of the funds,” Robinson said, adding that she hopes this will be completed by the end of this week which will allow hotels to put the funds collected thus far into one bank account.

“Each of the participating stakeholders needs to submit the funds that they’ve collected for the calendar year 2008 to the trustee and once that is done we’ll actually have a bank account so we will know what our budget is and we’ll be able to get the marketing committee together and build a marketing plan and go from there,” Robinson said, suggesting that the beginning of the 2010 calendar year would be a realistic starting point at this stage.

What does this mean for Jasper in January?

Elisabeth Bahner, Jasper in January 2009 committee chairperson, stated her concern for the event in an interview last week. “That whole three-week event may not happen at all next year, because Jasper in January is a committee that is with Ski Jasper [the consortium] that after June does not exist anymore because the DMF [destination marketing fee] funds are coming into play.”

In the past, the consortium has contributed about $25,000 to help with the staging of collective events, banners and posters for example. “That [money] goes to the events committee and they use those dollars for various things,” said Rode.

“But it’s Marmot Basin and the individual hotels that put together packages and advertise out in the market and tell people to come to Jasper in January,” he said, adding that for the consortium marketing Jasper in January is just one part of a finely tuned web of marketing whereby the message will simply change with the events going on.

Helen Kelleher-Empey, general manger of Jasper Tourism and Commerce (JTC), said JTC was “contracted, for this year, to implement Jasper in January but what happens with Jasper in January is not a Jasper Tourism and Commerce decision, Ski Jasper funds it,” in an interview last week.

While it is too early for Robinson and her board to begin discussing who will be contracted and whether or not marketing tools, such as Jasper in January, will be utilized in the future, she did not rule out the possibility of contracting the JTC in the future.

While it is Robinson’s plan to have some marketing initiatives “laid out” by the calendar year of 2010 she said there was a possibility that Jasper in January would be a part of the JDMC’s marketing plan.

Given Rode’s sentiment that the success of Jasper in January lies in the community involvement, it is not just financial support that is needed. “Every time we’ve thrived as a community and had a lot of pride in what we’ve done as a community is when we do contribute to a pool, not just a financial pool, but a person pool, human resource pool where we work together and do something we can be proud of and have a really good time,” he said.

Whatever the future of the Ski Consortium and however the JDMC moves forward, Rode is happy to guarantee that there will be a Jasper in January 2010. “I’ll just call up the hotels and say, ‘Hey you guys want to get together and talk about Jasper in January?’ and they’re all going to say, ‘Of course,’ [and] we’re going to sit down and talk about prices.”

“To really oversimplify it,” he said. “Jasper isn’t going away and I don’t think the month of January is going away, so there will always be Jasper in January.”