In January, The Insights Collective, a think tank comprised of longtime mountain and resort tourism professionals, suggested that the post-pandemic environment in mountain communities needed some “balance,” a new way of thinking about community wellness and economic stability. Specifically, we proposed that communities have an opportunity to systematically address emerging post-pandemic conflicts between the requirements of the tourism economy and the quality of life of residents to achieve equilibrium (“Questions of Balance,” SAM, January 2024). 

Mountain resort communities met the realities of the pandemic and post-pandemic churn head-on. As the dust settles, whole communities are faced with shifting perceptions about quality of life and sentiment toward their tourism economy. The needs of the residents and the economic engine are at odds.

With an electorate looking for solutions, town officials and their resort operator partners face the challenge of finding the right balance between quality of life and sustaining the benefits of tourism. But that raises a complex question of what balance is, with different parties looking for different things from their community, most generally influenced by home ownership, residency status, and time in the community, but also by family status and income, among other factors. 

New tools are needed to quantify the degree of separation between residential quality of life and the economic goals of the jurisdiction, and to measure the work to be done to achieve balance. 

In collaboration with the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG) and the Colorado Association of Ski Towns (CAST), we conducted a detailed study of five Colorado mountain counties to understand residential quality of life and determine where those counties sat on a spectrum between fully tourism-centric and fully resident-centric. We call that spectrum “Continuum.”

Continuum

Continuum is a scale that measures centricity from different perspectives, including those of residents, second-home owners, and government officials, further broken down by various characteristics (age, income, gender, homeowner, renter, and many more). 

First, it methodically quantifies 29 ‘‘soft” quality-of-life traits across the resident base and applies scores to those qualities before slicing the data by a wide series of traits that reveal significant variances in what’s important to residents. It measures whether quality of life is improving, declining, or unchanged. 

Importantly, it also quantifies where respondents feel their community is on a continuum between resident centricity and tourism centricity, and where respondents would like it to be. We call the difference between these two points the “departure gap;” it represents the degree of work that needs to be done to achieve perceived balance. 

The result is a set of KPIs that measure the understanding of 1) the community’s current numerical position on Continuum (start point), 2) the desired numerical position on Continuum (target), and 3) the work required to shift from the current to desired state (departure gap). 

A few things are clear as we analyze this first look at the findings: 

• Second-home owners have a dramatically different take than full-time residents on both what’s important to quality of life and on tourism versus resident centricity.
• Quality of life is largely perceived as negatively impacted by over-visitation, and quality of life has been deteriorating in the last several years.
• Residents in all five counties studied feel their community is too far toward the tourism side of the continuum and seek a shift toward resident centricity.
• Elected officials perceive their community as more stable than their constituents.

“Proximity” Drives Perspective

There was a significant variance in responses based on residential status of full-time, year-round resident (68 percent of respondents) or second-home owner (32 percent), and many of the key takeaways were derived from these foundational differences. Because differences in response based on residential status are so clearly delineated in the findings, we’ll use residency and home ownership as the basis for the data we present here in this article.

It became clear that full-time, year-round residents—both those that rent and those that own the home they live in—had a more negative view of destination tourism than their second-home owner counterparts. This is the result of them living the impact of a tourism-based economy day-to-day. Second-home owners, by absentia, don’t experience the direct impact of tourism and are inclined to support an ongoing robust tourism trade, particularly if their second home is a short-term rental (STR), which makes them tourism-dependent business owners. 

There are also differences in how full-time, year-round residents who are renters feel compared to those that own their home. Renters have a paradoxical relationship with the tourism economy. Though most are employed directly in the tourism sector, they tend to push back against the tourism economy even more than their homeowning peers despite the potential threat to their livelihood if visitation slows.

Shifting Quality of Life 

Understanding the value respondents place on quality of life (QoL) is at the center of putting Continuum KPIs to work. Quality of life is largely perceived as declining in mountain resort communities. 

Overall, 34 percent of respondents feel that QoL has declined in the past few years, while just 13 percent feel it’s improving and 31 percent say it is improving in some respects, declining in others. 

As noted earlier, one of the key factors in a perceived decline in QoL is proximity. The more a respondent lives day-to-day with the impact of tourism, the more they feel it negatively impacts their quality of life. Of the full-time, year-round residents in our study that own their home, 42 percent say QoL is declining and only 11 percent feel it’s improving. Conversely, just 18 percent of second-home owners feel it’s declining while 20 percent say it’s improving. The perceived consequence of living the tourism economy day-to-day is clear. 

One of the primary issues is overcrowding, which has a downstream impact on many quality-of-life issues from parking or grocery store inventory to internet speed or first responder resources. And when we assess overcrowding, we find similar responses to those around quality of life: 49 percent of full-time owners and 45 percent of full-time renters agree or strongly agree that the area is overcrowded because of too many visitors, while just 30 percent of second-home owners feel the same way. 

It’s apparent that the challenges of communities are acutely internal, even to the degree that the second-home owners, though invested in the community but not physically located there, may not be fully aware of the day-to-day impact of tourism on quality of life, presenting both tactical and educational opportunities in the search for balance. 

Some Lines are Clear

Continuum is clear that goals vary widely between different resident groups. Keeping in mind the three KPIs of (1) current position on the continuum, (2) desired position, and (3) the difference between the two (the “departure gap,” which represents work to be done), there are broad differences between homeowners and residents. 

Residents that live in the town year-round are far more likely to perceive their community as heavily tourism-centric than second-home owners, and they’re also likely to seek a more resident-centric focus as a future state. But while indicative of the proximity argument, that falls short of the real details. 

Digging in (see graphic below), when asked to place their community on a scale ranging from +5 (wholly tourism focused) to -5 (wholly resident focused), full-time, year-round residents that rent the home they live in place their community at 2.1 points toward tourism focused, more than any other cohort in the study. 

Again, renters are a group tied intimately to the tourism economy via employment. They also experience the pressures of that economy most acutely, including a dependence on community services that can be negatively impacted if town resources aren’t directed toward them. It’s not surprising, then, that they favor the largest swing toward resident centricity, with a desired -1.5-point position on the continuum and the largest departure gap of all groups, -3.6 points. Renters see their community as furthest from their desired state. 

Meanwhile, full-time, year-round homeowners perceive the destination as less tourism focused (1.4 points), desire less resident focus (-1.1 points), and with a -2.5-point departure gap are seeking less dramatic (though still significant) change. 

The second-home owner cohort is where the “proximity to the community” factor becomes apparent. Second-home owners that do not rent their home as an STR are more likely to spend time in the community than those that do. They’re exposed to the pressure tourism can apply to the community and recognize tourism centricity, though to a lesser extent, scoring their destinations slightly tourism focused at 0.8 points on the continuum, and favor a moderate -1.1-point shift toward a more resident focused economy. 

Second-home owners that rent their unit as an STR, however, are largely detached from the day-to-day impact of tourism and are at least partially dependent on the success of tourism to drive rental revenue. As such, they’re the only cohort across the study that favors remaining on the tourism side of Continuum, scoring current 0.8 points and desiring a future state of 0.7 points tourism-focused. 

Though some may argue that second-home owners are not part of the mountain community, they can be subject to higher property taxes, restrictions and fees, and help drive economic activity through their rentals, making their voice an important part of the equilibrium discussion. 

Residency and Ownership Differentiates Communities

Looking at the findings from the county level (see graphic below), it’s clear that residency and ownership play a major role in community perceptions. Routt County, home of Steamboat, has the highest instance of home ownership, the most full-time, year-round residents, and the lowest rate of second-home ownership. Residents in Routt County view their destination more on the tourism-centric side of the spectrum than any other county, scoring it at 1.9 points. They also have the widest departure gap, seeking a major -3.0-point shift toward resident centricity. 

Conversely, Summit County—home to Breckenridge, Copper, Arapahoe Basin, Loveland, and Keystone—with the highest occurrence of second-home owners and some of the lowest levels of full-time, year-round residents, has a more moderate -1.9-point departure gap and a desired state that’s almost completely balanced at just -0.4 points. 

Engagement Changes Perception

In understanding the desires and needs of residents based on full-time versus second-home owners, there are other important individual traits that drive quality-of-life values and perceptions of balance. Role in the community is one. 

An analysis of how elected officials and unelected members of boards responded compared to residents with varying levels of engagement in governance reveals a difference between electorate and policymakers’ perceptions. 

For example, across the entire study, elected officials put their community closer to the “0,” or balanced level, than all other groups, and recorded a departure gap of -2.2 points from current to desired state. But residents that are not engaged at all feel their destination is strongly tourism centric (2.1 points), and seek a greater shift toward resident focus, with a -3.4-point departure gap. 

Between these two extremes of elected officials / board members and totally disengaged residents are residents that are actively engaged in governance but are not elected officials. This group has a considerably different perspective from their unengaged peers, with a departure gap of -2.4 points, almost the same as elected officials. This shows that citizens engaged in any level of governance have less extreme current and desired states, while those that are furthest from the process have the most extreme. 

There is clearly an opportunity for jurisdictions and resort operators to work together on new or different ways to engage the community as part of creating balance. 

Shifting Priorities, Shifting Dollars?

Most mountain communities have a destination marketing organization (DMO) that is largely funded by the town and lodging taxes, and whose mandate is to market and sell the destination. In response to overcrowding, some towns have reactively tried to modify DMO mandates from tourism marketing to management, or even mitigation, with varying levels of success. Those shifts have been accompanied or preceded by a call to divert funding from DMOs toward community resources. 

As an immediately discernible consequence to perceived changes to quality of life, we asked respondents about tourism funding. Overall, 69 percent of respondents either agree or strongly agree with diverting funds from marketing to other community priorities, while just 15 percent disagree in any way and 17 percent are neutral. Not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation between Continuum departure gaps and solidarity around diverting funding: 76 percent of full-time, year-round residents that are renters either agree or strongly agree with diverting funding, and 75 percent of full-timers that own their residence feel the same. These groups also have the widest departure gaps on Continuum. 

Meanwhile, while still significant, just 42 percent of second-home owners that rent their unit as an STR agree or strongly agree with diverting funding, while 33 percent disagree or strongly disagree. But most surprising is the degree to which respondents favor shifting funds, with 41 percent overall favoring a 25-50 percent reduction in tourism spending, 27 percent seeking a 50-75 percent reduction, and 17 percent seeking a 100 percent reduction. 

The punchline here is correlation and causation; those that favor diverting funding are the same folks that are most impacted by tourism day-to-day.

Differences in funding desires aren’t limited to ownership and residency; there are strong correlations between many of the broader traits studied. For example, lower-income households, ironically those that are most dependent on the tourism economy, are most strongly in favor of funding diversion, while the wealthiest are least in favor. But 65 percent of lower income households are also renting their residence, while wealthier households are the most prominent owner of an STR unit, so the residency correlation continues. 

Further breaking it down by involvement in local governance, time in the community, etc., reveals similar correlations between those traits and ownership and residential status, helping solidify the interplay between residency and issues related to balance. Opinion around funding diversion, which may be enacted through ballot measures, needs to be taken very seriously, and Continuum is an opportunity to understand dissent and address issues before long-term mandates have significant consequence on the economic viability of a community and success of resort and activity operations. 

Tying it all Together

While this article focuses largely on finding community balance by measuring responses based on home ownership and residency type, it does so only to demonstrate some clear delineations between community groups. Topics we didn’t cover here—like respondent age, income, gender, and family size—have a significant impact on how residents answered questions about quality of life and the community’s position on Continuum. So did length of time in the community and remote versus on-site work. And while much of what we’ve learned does come down to full-time versus second-home owner, the nuance is dramatically more complex and localized. 

Inntopia and our colleagues at The Insights Collective strongly support year-round mountain tourism and the opportunities it creates for lifestyle, community, and economy. But we also see that balance between industry partners, residents, and policymakers has been upset since Covid. Pre-existing issues of the late ’teens were exacerbated by the pandemic, and new issues have arisen. We believe that working to restore equilibrium is critical to the long-term sustainability of mountain resort communities. 

Continuum has revealed that most residents in the study area feel that quality of life is deteriorating, that overcrowding has a negative impact on their community, and that a shift toward resident centricity is critical to lifestyle, even at the expense of the tourism economic engine. 

But there are limits to what can, or indeed should, be done, and how quickly. By understanding where quality of life is being negatively impacted and correlating that to departure gap numbers, policymakers can work surgically in partnership with their residential and resort constituents to find the balance that supports a healthy, sustainable tourism trade and the ski, ride, paddle and hike lifestyle we’re all passionate about, without over-sacrificing either revenue or quality of life.

After spending much of the past several years being reactive, resort communities are now in a position to plan what the future looks like. Imbalances that existed prior to the pandemic have been exacerbated, and residents, having found a voice during the sonic boom of pent-up demand, are making their concerns—and desires—known. Measuring and understanding where quality of life is changing for individual groups within the community is key to knowing where jurisdictions can tweak funding or services to address issues and move the community toward a more balanced mix of tourism and residency, without upsetting the apple cart.