From its inception as a recreational playground, this Valley’s rampant growth has been driven by ever more sophisticated and ubiquitous destination marketing. To turn sparsely populated ranchland into a place where people will vie to spend untold sums on opulent lodging and caviar surcharges is no small feat, one executed by multiple generations of dreamers, copywriters, corporate strategists, and their ilk. Profit was always a chief motivation for the development and evolution of this geography, one exacerbated when control was ceded to a corporate behemoth concerned chiefly with quarterly earnings reports and shareholder returns. Despite our emotional attachment to this gorgeous place, one cannot deny that it is a slickly packaged sales pitch, a living and breathing prospectus.
Because Vail’s marketing messaging is so tightly focus-grouped, expertly-analyzed, data-driven, we are made to perceive it as superior to and less offensive than other, less professional means of pecuniary persuasion. But crisp copy and captivating photography does not change the underlying hunger for money that forms the basis for Vail’s grasp for visitor dollars. Recently returned from a city where touts aimed at tourists are very common, I was struck by the base similarities between the efforts of those hucksters and the corporate departments that also bombard us with pleas for attention and funds.
If a street vendor is to be regarded with suspicion, then that logic should also apply to a corporate marketing department. Indeed, the very corporateness of our controlling entity and its commensurate, unrelenting drive for more revenue should result in a high level of skepticism as to the veracity of the claims made by it. Both street touts and marketing departments are tasked with luring people in to spend their paychecks and trust funds, whether hard-earned or ill-gotten. To achieve those ends, there are a multitude of means available, most of which are centered on exploiting the psychology of the consumer. This could mean touching on feelings of guilt, on playing to ego, on convincing one that they need to visit in order to keep up with one’s perceived socioeconomic equals. There is scant difference between the two segments, although that similarity is clouded by imposed cultural perceptions.
With what I wish was disbelief but was actually resignation, I watched affluent white people physically swat away brown-skinned people who were simply asking the former if they wanted a taxi or jewelry or to be shown a cool restaurant. While the aggressive methods of the street purveyor may be distasteful to some, there is never an excuse to treat someone else as less than human. There can be no doubt that issues of race and class and the alleged superiority of the “First World” to the “Third World” inform the shocking treatment that I witnessed. It was made all the more odious by the twin facts that the white people were (ungracious and myopic) visitors to a foreign land and that the conditions experienced by the inhabitants of the visited land were directly caused by the ills of colonization.
It would never occur to these imperialist interlopers to direct the same uncouth actions that they took towards the local populace to a Director of Marketing. And yet, the marketing department may be even more odious, less trustworthy in its undertakings. Indeed, the dude on the corner was asking for a purchase of a mere pittance, whereas the cost to even set foot in this town is absolutely astronomical. So, the methodologies must be prorated by the potential for deleterious effects to one’s bank account. If you buy a $10 bracelet or eat a $20 meal that does not live up to billing, that is considerably less problematic than spending $20,000 for a week in a place that has a certain beauty and magic, but is not the nirvana that marketing copy would posit.
Certainly, none of the destination marketing for the resort refers to the very real systemic problems that plague this community. It would be extremely interesting if the claims of this being a place unlike any other also disclosed that we have suicide, crime, suffering aplenty, characteristics that make us much more like other places than we are willing to admit, and definitely not in marketing materials.