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Your summer guests love trails. They crave convenient access to trails so they can walk, run, hike, and bike. Believe it or not, that’s a big part of why they visit our resorts—to experience nature in ways they can’t at home. And you can profit from this desire.

As resort operators, managers, and planners, we aim to provide the experiences our guests crave. Trails are very much in demand and they build positive guest experiences, but it’s not always easy to see the financial payback. You typically can’t charge a fee to use them, and they cost money to build and maintain. But research shows that trails are, in fact, the number-one summer attraction, and they do bring in the bucks.

What the Guest Wants

Every single Kelsey & Norden Resort Real Estate Survey conducted from 2009 to 2014 has identified visible and accessible pathways and trails as the number one amenity for resort communities. In the 2013 Community Preference Survey, conducted on behalf of the National Association of Realtors, 80 percent of those polled considered trails, sidewalks, and places to take a walk a top priority when deciding where to live. Trails and places to walk ranked higher than “high quality public schools.” That tells us something.

In 2000, a study of Colorado resorts found that about 700,000 guests—a little more than half of all summer visitors at the time—were engaged in bicycling at the resorts. According to the study, almost half of these 700,000 visitors “were attracted primarily by the availability of bicycling.” These biking numbers include both lift-served downhill mountain biking and “free” biking. (The free biking is harder to keep track of, so these estimates are likely conservative).

You might be thinking, “I’ve got this covered. There are a lot of trails at my property.” But it is important to consider what these surveys are actually telling us: the availability of a robust trail network highly influences where our guests choose to visit, and most visiting cyclists are looking for something other than rugged on-mountain hiking and lift-served mountain biking trails. These internal—and often disconnected—trail systems are great for a limited subset of enthusiasts, but that’s about it. Plus, these kinds of trails don’t really contribute to what guests are saying they want: accessible connectivity!

Get Connected!

Guests want connectivity—within resort boundaries and beyond. They want to be able to walk and bike from their lodging to the resort village, and from the village into town. Something as simple as traveling by bike or on foot to a park, or a nearby restaurant, can be the positive guest experience that triggers a return visit.

Since these visitors need a place to stay, establish your resort as a home base for all sorts of walking, bicycling, and trail tourists. A few suggestions:
• Promote a series of road rides around your resort and the local area by providing maps and even some advertising.
• Develop networks of hiking and cross-country mountain bike trails that lead onto and off of your property.
• Offer an extensive multi-use path system designed for the casual walker, rider, and families.

These steps will increase connectivity and bring more locals, employees, and guests to your resort, safely and easily.

Summit County, Colo., is one place where all this happens seamlessly. The county’s recreation paths connect all the resorts and towns—including Vail, which is 30 miles down the road. Thousands of people ride shuttle buses up Vail Pass from Frisco and Vail every summer so they can cruise downhill on the paved multi-use path next to I-70. There are free cross-country mountain bike trails that connect to lift-served opportunities at Keystone and Breckenridge. There are amazing road rides all over the county. There is even a contingent of skateboarders who take the Summit Stage bus and skate the all-downhill multi-use path from Copper to Frisco.

And the Summit County resorts act as home base for it all (plus their own internal hike and mountain bike systems). Thousands of guests come for these “non-paying” activities, but spend a significant amount of money on rooms, food, and everything else while staying at the resort. Trail tourists have money to spend!

Cashing In

In our recent community planning work, SE Group has analyzed the economic impact of numerous trails, and found some remarkable results. Most notably, trail tourists spend a lot of money. For example, a single but iconic hiking and mountain biking trail in Snowmass Village, Colo., generates approximately $6 million in sales every year. It supports 98 jobs and provides $728,000 in federal, state, and local taxes, including direct and secondary effects.

Trail-user spending, in this case, refers to spending by both locals and non-locals at area businesses, although locals spend significantly less per trip on average ($11.31) than do non-local users ($261). Those are staggering numbers for one trail. And it’s only one of hundreds in the Roaring Fork Valley, so the entire trail system supports a multi-million dollar industry.

So, now that we know trail-tourists are a high-yielding group, the big question is: how many are really out there? The answer: A lot!

• More than a third of all Americans ride a bicycle (34 percent). That’s more participation than golf, skiing, and tennis combined.
• And 29 percent of Americans hike, run, jog, and trail run for recreation.

This is a huge market of potential guests to attract to your resort.

Be An Advocate

So now you’re saying, “Alright. I get it. I need to have bike and pedestrian connectivity throughout my resort, plus a trail and road network outside of my boundary. But how? Outside of my boundary means outside of my control.”

Not necessarily. Work with your surrounding community as a partner and supporter of trails and other active transportation infrastructure. In doing so, you can increase your visits, your room nights, and your bottom line—all from infrastructure you don’t even have to maintain. It’s very important for you to be at the table when your host community is having these discussions. Their decisions will impact you whether you’re there or not, so you might as well weigh in.

Sugarbush, Vt., got this right. SE Group is currently working on a regional active transportation plan for the communities in the Mad River Valley. Naturally, Margo Wade, director of planning and compliance for Sugarbush, is on the steering committee. She is helping to shape the vision for the plan, and ensuring that Sugarbush is front-of-mind when planners are considering important destinations and how to connect them.

Sugarbush is also working on new connectivity trails of its own, and promoting all of the amazing hiking and biking opportunities throughout the region to its summer guests—positioning itself as the ideal base camp for central Vermont adventures.

You can do the same, and realize new revenues in the process. Build trails on your property for connectivity, not just recreation. Position your resort as a home base for trail tourists. And claim a seat at the table in community trail discussions. Your guests—and your accountants—will be glad you did.