CO Resort Communities - Drought Impacts

Home Browse Search

perceptions. Communities largely dependent on tourism and visitors' spending recognized the importance of having disaster communication response plans in place explicitly for the tourism industry. In fact, the Colorado Office of Tourism developed a comprehensive public relations plan in the summer of 2002 as part of the Drought Task Force. The locals frequently identified the importance of the work done by the Colorado Office of Tourism. In addition to the public relations campaign at the state level, some of the local communities developed communication plans as well, recognizing that they cannot depend on the state. These disaster communication response plans were considered especially necessary at both the state and local levels because in spite of the sporadic nature of the wildfires, the public perception was that the entire state was being affected by the fires and their smoke plumes. One of lessons learned was that the public message must be balanced, with public education about the hazard while at the same time with presenting opportunities to tourists and visitors. The message should include both accurate information about the hazard and positive aspects of either regional variability or diversity of attractions (from state recommendation). Change in cultural or environmental educational or marketing strategies is needed to leverage of hazards. Often hazards can present a good opportunity to learn about resources and change certain practices. Recommendations As a result of the information collected from the interviews and. the lessons learned by the resort communities across Colorado, eight recommendations have been developed for any resort community vulnerable to drought impacts. L Develop State and Resort Community Crisis Management Plans. One of the most important lessons learned by the state and resort communities in Colorado was that disaster events, like the drought and tires during the summer 2002, require the establishment of crisis management plans so that the response to the events can. be swift and coordinated. Therefore, it is recommended that states and local resort communities each develop their own crisis management plans to deal with these disaster events. Several communities already had crisis management plans in place that immediately served to help that community respond during the height of the .fires during 2002. In fact, one interviewee cited the example of their crisis management plan as helpful during the drought, and then equally helpful in 2003 when a flood - caused sinkhole closed Interstate 70 for several days in the spring. The resort communities shared that a successful crisis management plan seeks the involvement of all the local businesses and local media. It is important that community officials, businesses, the media, and the public are all sharing the same information and providing a consistent message to each other, as well as state and national officials and media. In some cases, the World Wide Web proved to be an effective dissemination tool for providing the coordination and communication needed by the crisis management plans. Press releases were made available over the 10