Ogden a hot spot

Promotion as summer tourist destination paying off

BY JEFF DEMOSS
Standard-Examiner staff

OGDEN — Anyone questioning the Ogden area’s growing reputation as a summer tourism destination need only look at the numbers, officials say.
Through July, hotel room tax collections in Weber County are up about 5 percent this year over 2006, said County Comptroller Dan Olsen. “We are seeing an increase in volume,” he said.
That figure doesn’t take into account a transient room tax rate increase of nearly 37 percent that took effect Jan. 1. With the higher rate, collections are up almost 43 percent this year. The tax rate rose from 3 percent to 4.1 percent.
   Notwithstanding the rate hike, tourism and hotel officials say business is booming this summer, thanks in large part to a wave of spring and summer visitors flocking to such events as the Ogden Marathon, Xterra Games and Ogden Valley Balloon Festival, which are growing in popularity every year.
   “We’ve got some real momentum going,” said Mike Caldwell, president of the Ogden/Weber Convention & Visitors Bureau. “There’s been a tremendous growth trend.”
   He cites several factors behind that momentum, including increased funding from the state for marketing efforts, a noticeable rise in business visitors and the opening of the Salomon Center downtown.
   The ball keeps rolling Saturday night with A Cappellastock, the singing festival that drew 3,000 to downtown Ogden last year.
   Jared Allen, an organizer of the event and tenor singer in the local a cappella group T Minus 5, said the festival has already sold 1,000 tickets — about double last year’s total.
   The first A Cappellastock was held in Layton three years ago, but was moved to Ogden to take advantage of a more visitor-friendly layout, Allen said.
   “Everything is in walking distance,” he said. “You can bring a group in and have them stay at a hotel right around the corner, and all the restaurants are right there, and now the Salomon Center.
   “You can just drop them off instead of having to drive them around.”
   Through the first seven months of this year, the county collected more than $440,000 in transient room taxes, up from $309,000 a year earlier, according to the Utah State Tax Commission.
   Through the first half of 2007, hotel occupancy in the county averaged 64.4 percent, up from 62 percent a year earlier. But local hotels were nearly 75 percent full in June, and the numbers have been even higher in July and August.
   The balloon festival and Xterra triathlon in Ogden Valley last week brought enough visitors to fill more than 80 percent of available beds in the valley, said Nancy Seraphin, marketing director for Wolf Creek Resort.
   Untimely wind and rain interfered with some balloon launch plans, but with all the surrounding activities, “the festival was by no means a washout,” she said.
   The same weather patterns helped keep temperatures and trail dust down for the triathlon, Caldwell said.
   Ogden hotels have seen a noticeable spike in business with the recent events, and the rising demand has allowed area hotels to raise their room prices an average of 9 percent over last year, the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report found.
   Alan Elliott, general manager of the downtown Ogden Marriott, said the “leisure transients” who come to outdoor events in the area spend more on average than business travelers who might book their rooms months in advance at group rates.
   “You can get a lot more from a guy walking in the door than from someone who’s booked out three months. It’s no different than the airlines,” he said.
   “You might be at a hotel where you’re paying $90, and the person next door is paying $140.”
   Selling more hotel room nights can create a snowball effect because much of the funding for local tourism marketing efforts comes from transient room taxes, Caldwell said.
   “The county sets our budget, so it’s not directly tied to room taxes,” he said, “but it’s something we work with them on, and they’ve made significant investments in new marketing efforts.”