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  Home Page » News » Ranches Adapting To Tough Times

Ranches adapting to tough times

Economy keeping more vacationers from leaving home

by Garrett Andrews
Herald Staff Writer Changing American vacation habits and a deepening recession are causing Southwest Colorado's dude ranches to get creative as they brace for another tough summer.

Colorado Trails Ranch, off Florida Road (County Road 240) northeast of Durango, will not be accepting guests this summer in an effort to conserve resources and come back stronger next summer. Wilderness Trails Ranch, northeast of Vallecito Reservoir, and Mancos Lake Ranch, near Jackson Lake, are shifting strategies as more out-of-state vacationers stay home.

"We're gearing toward next summer," said Colorado Trails Ranch general manager Jeanne Ross. The ranch is going to sit vacant this summer for the first time in nearly 50 years.

Nationwide, the dude ranch industry is experiencing a 2- to 3-year slump, said Colleen Hodson, executive director of The Dude Ranchers' Association, a trade group based in Cody, Wyo. She said a recent internal survey of the organization's member ranches shows sales this year down between 15 and 20 percent from the same time last year.

The association has been in operation since 1926 and consists of more than 100 dude ranches across 12 Western states and two Canadian provinces. According to the group's Web site, the association has strict guidelines for membership, and not all ranches calling themselves dude ranches are part of the organization.

Dude ranches have existed in the West for nearly as long as have dudes and ranches. Enterprising cowboys saw as early as the late 1800s that vacationing Easterners would pay to experience an idealized West, complete with smoke-stained clothes, starry skies and black coffee poured confidently from a tin kettle - if only for a few days.

Dude ranches today offer guests easy living to complement the Western experience - full-time child care and youth programs, day spas and masseuses, in-house chefs and day trips indulging guests' interests. Ranches today commonly host family reunions and corporate retreats, and typically cost about $300-$500 per person, per day, for the all-inclusive experience.

Hodson said dude ranch profits haven't strayed far from the hospitality-industry average during the recession.

Another trend Hodson noticed is ranches in the Southwest have seen more weeklong trips booked on short notice, she thinks, because of discounts and vacationers taking longer to deliberate before taking their trips. She expects the trend to spread to northern dude ranches, as well.

"We're adapting to what people can afford. And not only that, a lot of people just don't have the time anymore," she said.

For the first time, Wilderness Trails Ranch, located two miles upstream from Vallecito Reservoir, will offer vacation packages for fewer than six days. An industry standard recently was relaxed this year by the Dude Ranchers' Association, permitting member ranches to host stays shorter than one week. Because of financial uncertainty and vacationers across the country taking shorter trips, Wilderness Trails is attempting to fill what it calls its "shoulder season" of June through September with more regional visitors and locals, something the ranch has never done before.

"It's always been an all-inclusive package, just for on-site guests," said Wilderness Trails General Manager Erika Roberts.

Roberts, who grew up on the ranch and whose family has operated it since 1970, said it now will begin offering trail rides and pack-trip packages, weekend bed-and-breakfast stays and will open its dining room to "off-site" guests several nights a week. She also is planning discounts for fliers to offset travel costs, holiday weekend packages and a youth horsemanship day camp scheduled for the end of the summer.

She said the ranch is adjusting to new times.

"Oh yeah, we're feeling it. Typically, by this time of year, we're at anywhere from 70 to 80 percent occupancy, and we're at 35 percent," she said.

Wilderness Trails has 10 cabins and a maximum occupancy of 36 guests. Roberts estimated that in the past, 95 percent of the ranch's guests have been families from out of state. Lately, she said she's been seeing more childless adult couples and is asked more often to book shorter stays.

Roberts sees many of the same families and guests each year.

"They feel so much uncertainty in their situations that they're either not going to take a family vacation this year or they don't feel like they can commit the time that people typically do for this type of trip."

A common problem for the dude ranch industry is the "sticker shock" associated with the high all-inclusive price tag. A six-day package at Wilderness Trails runs a customer $2,250; Colorado Trails, $2,585; and Mancos Lake, $1,750. Hodson said the cost is not so exorbitant once the customer considers what's included.

"When you cart it all out, they're going to be saving money, but they perceive that they're not. Everything's included - your lodging, your food, your transportation," she said.

Mancos Lake Ranch owner Ernie Noia, approaching his second summer as managing owner, said he has unique strategies for combating the recession, but isn't about to spill them. The self-described "city-slicker" from New York City, and Palm Springs, Calif., winter resident, is focusing his marketing on Southern California, again relying on families for most of his business.

Noia and two others purchased the ranch in 2007 after mother-and-son owners Cathy and Todd Sehnert sold the property the family had operated as a dude ranch since 1956. Mancos Lake won't try bringing in locals like Wilderness Trails, but Noia said the recession is forcing him to revise his business model.

Colorado Trails Ranch, in business every summer since 1960, will not be accepting lodgers this summer, a first for the family-owned ranch. Colorado Trails is the only one of the Dude Ranchers' Association's member ranches currently planning to sit the summer out.

The decision was made early, Ross said, to give the ranch's 15 staff members time to find other employment and allow vacationers who already had booked the time to find other accommodations. She said she'll spend the rest of the summer caring for the ranch's many horses and maintaining the property.

"We didn't feel we had enough reservations to offer a quality vacation," she said. "There needs to be a couple families to get the most out of it. Part of the dude ranch experience is the other people you get to play with and meet. It's just not as fun if it's just one family."

gandrews@durangoherald.com