{"id":99267,"date":"2018-06-09T11:36:13","date_gmt":"2018-06-09T17:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/416-fire-not-harming-tourism-director-says\/"},"modified":"2018-06-09T11:36:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-09T17:36:13","slug":"416-fire-not-harming-tourism-director-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/416-fire-not-harming-tourism-director-says\/","title":{"rendered":"416 Fire not harming tourism, director says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Claudia
Claudia Foley with the Durango Visitors Center explains traffic closures on U.S. Highway 550 and various attractions on Wednesday while talking to Bob and Carol Blackwell of Asheville, N.C. The Durango Area Tourism Office and city are working to clear up perceptions tourists have about the 416 Fire.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Tourism agencies have well-crafted marketing campaigns to draw in targeted crowds. But when natural disasters happen, they have to pivot to crisis communication to keep their message on point.<\/p>\n

The Durango Area Tourism Office is working overtime now to keep misperceptions about Durango at bay after the 416 Fire broke out June 1. Tourists are largely unaware of the fire, and if they have heard about it, many have faulty impressions spreading on the internet.<\/p>\n

DATO\u2019s<\/a> main focus of its crisis communication plan is to relay accurate information to media and journalists covering the fire that commerce on Main Avenue is largely unaffected by the fire burning 10 miles north of Durango.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we are responding to people who have inquiries. We want to provide accurate information and let people know we\u2019re open for business and doing good. The fire hasn\u2019t affected activity in Durango, and there\u2019s plenty of things to do,\u201d said Frank Lockwood, DATO executive director.<\/p>\n

The fire is not at the stage where it would require any additional advertising buys to explain the situation, Lockwood said.<\/p>\n

\"Lockwood\"
Lockwood<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThe most important information to get out is that the Million Dollar Highway is closed off and on. The main thing is to communicate how things are going with the fire, and that the fire is 10 miles north of town,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tourism, Lockwood said last week, had been largely unaffected by the 416 Fire. Monday the fire was listed at 22,130 acres and at 10 percent containment.<\/p>\n

Still, a fire that extends through June can\u2019t help but hurt.<\/p>\n

Jim Harper, general manager of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, said if the train is forced to close for the month of June, the train\u2019s second busiest month after July, it will deliver a $33 million hit to the local economy.<\/p>\n

And Ken Boden, who has owned Handlebars Food & Saloon in Silverton for 29 years, said Greene Street is still getting some foot traffic, but Blair Street is dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen it where the train and the highway are both closed. It\u2019s devastating,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only thing that\u2019s saving us is we\u2019re on Greene Street, and there\u2019s some traffic. If you\u2019re on Blair Street, you don\u2019t have a chance in hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Durango Visitor Center<\/a>, 802 Main Ave., is selling between 200 and 300 tickets a day for tours at Mesa Verde National Park, a good indication of a strong tourism season. Lockwood also noted that the vibrant foot traffic on Main Avenue belies any indication the fire has yet to squeeze Durango\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Tourism Office is also working with DATO to get out accurate fire information, Lockwood said. DATO and the city have been preparing a communication strategy for fire season for months given the winter\u2019s paltry snowpack, he said.<\/p>\n

DATO has also sent out information about the fire to other tourism marketing organizations around the state, so they too can provide accurate information to tourists looking at regional tours.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, misconceptions persist, Lockwood said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are overgeneralizing about the evacuations,\u201d he said. \u201cI was asked a few days ago if Durango was evacuated. I was like, \u2018Heavens no. Where did that come from?\u2019 So, we want to clean up any misconceptions that are really bad for business. Now, let\u2019s hope for containment and good monsoons.\u201d<\/p>\n

DATO\u2019s tourism advertising budget is about $1 million, funded by the lodgers tax on rooms in Durango and La Plata County.<\/p>\n

Lockwood said the budget is unaffected by the fire, and the fire would not likely change the advertising plan for the year unless it grew substantially worse.<\/p>\n

DATO is under contract with Treehouse Communications of Durango for public relations work to get travel articles written about Durango and for assistance with crisis communications. He said it is conceivable the agency would assess more billable hours to DATO because of the fire, but he said the cost would be negligible to DATO\u2019s total budget \u2013 similar to the cost of an employee\u2019s overtime.<\/p>\n

Lockwood said he has not heard of hotel room cancellations in worrying numbers.<\/p>\n

\"Linsey
Linsey Rogers and her son, Bing, 3, and Susan Lilly, all of Telluride, walk along Main Avenue in downtown Durango.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

About a quarter of the tourists at the Visitor Center have heard about the fire, he said. \u201cWe heard about it on Facebook,\u201d said Emily Harris, a newlywed honeymooning in Durango with her husband, John Harris. John said the couple was not concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty familiar with the Mountain West, and fires happen. It hasn\u2019t changed our plans. We\u2019re staying in Dolores, and we had planned on visiting Telluride and Silverton. We\u2019re on our honeymoon, so we were coming no matter what. We may not make it to Silverton.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angelo and Frances Poletto, visiting from Sauble Beach, Ontario, Canada, also read about the fire on the internet, but they were headed for Mesa Verde and then Monument Valley, having visited Durango and Silverton previously.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were here 15 years ago, and boy has it changed \u2013 the modernization. It\u2019s changed a lot. And for us, not really for the better. We like sleepy, little places,\u201d Angelo said.<\/p>\n

Sarah Harriman and Augusto Roman, visiting from Longmont, also headed to Mesa Verde. They said they were unaffected by the 416 Fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been following the fire, just to make sure we didn\u2019t get caught up in the middle of it or be in the way,\u201d Harriman said.<\/p>\n

Roman added, \u201cWe were coming down here, and usually fires are a thing you watch for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

416 Fire isn\u2019t harming city\u2019s tourism, office director says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[2838],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-99267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-416-fire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99267"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=99267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}