The city is assessing its role in Colorado Flights Alliance, the flight-guarantee program that brings thousands through Montrose Regional Airport each year.
The City of Montrose will discuss with the organization the flight partnership during a special meeting slated for 2:30 p.m. Nov. 10 at 107 S. Cascade Ave.
Although the city supports the alliance’s goals, officials want to see more visitors stay in Montrose, not just be funneled through the county-run airport on their way to Telluride, Mayor Rex Swanson indicated.
“This has been a tough deal for a number of years. We really don’t know how to deal with this,” Swanson said.
The City of Montrose is among the local governments that are part of the CFA. The public-private partnership also features Telluride, Mountain Village, Ouray, lodging businesses, restaurants, Telluride Ski and Golf Resort and others.
The local governments provide funding, while the ski resort provides a match and supporting programs. The bulk of the funding comes from the 2-percent lodgers’ tax charged in Telluride and Mountain Village, CFA’s Chief Operating Officer Matt Skinner said.
The city in June raised questions about the benefit it was seeing from its contribution, and also decided to go forward with a pilot project to market Montrose as a destination, according to a previous Montrose Daily Press report.
The city’s Office of Business and Tourism has been doing well at bringing people to town, and the goal is to retain visitors, even if they day-trip elsewhere, Swanson said.
“As we support CFA, we want people here staying in town. We need to talk to them (CFA) and see how we can work this out,” the mayor said.
“We are meeting with council. We have been working through funding questions over the past year,” Skinner said. “We’re looking for ways to take the partnership forward, including marketing discussions and flight planning.”
Colorado Flight Alliance guarantees a set amount of revenue to major commercial carriers and pays up to a certain amount if ticket sales don’t meet that amount.
The partnership means that this winter, flights will be available between Dallas/Fort Worth, Phoenix, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta.
Denver service operates year round, but during the winter season, more Denver flights are offered.
The alliance has developed all of the air service into Montrose outside of the Denver flights, Skinner said.
“The advantage is added airlift into and out of the region, both for visitors to get here to feed our tourism engine on the Western Slope, and also for locals and businesses to be able to travel out effectively,” he said.
The airport’s overall estimated economic impact to the region is $221.7 million, per the most current statistics from the Colorado Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division.
Colorado Flights Alliance does bring people to town, though many head on to Telluride, Swanson said.
“We want to support that, but we want people to come to Montrose and stay in Montrose. We’ll get them to Telluride, but we want them to stay in Montrose. If they want to ski, bike, fish, they can stay in Montrose and go (out) and do that kind of thing,” he said.
City officials do not know what the Nov. 10 discussion might yield.
“We want to have that conversation, but we don’t know what’s going to come out of that,” Swanson said.
Colorado Flights Alliance board members and staffers are to attend the meeting, said Skinner.
“This (meeting) is to get around the table to discuss where we’ve been the last couple of years, priorities for the City of Montrose and how we can work together to achieve those,” he said.