Utah Tech Spotlight Events

Park City Chamber, Speed pitch, and more!

Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 07

Happy Friday all! Today we have a guest-post review from Eric Morgan for the Park City Chamber new member orientation. This Chamber has some real interesting aspects of it, so expect us to keep a close eye on them. Additionally, I attended a Funding Universe Speed pitching event last night, and the Utah First Friday Extravaganza this morning… so expect write-ups on both of those int he coming days. But enough from me… here’s the good word form Eric:

Through attending a new member orientation conference with the Park City Chamber of Commerce you realize that they are somewhat of a unique chamber compared to most in Utah.

The meeting itself was very nice, located at the Stein Erickson Lodge in Deer Valley. There were about 30-40 people there; all of which were new members within the last 3-4 months. They provided a continental breakfast and there was no charge to attend the event.

I learned some cool facts and data about the organization; here are some key points that stuck out to me. They are the 3rd largest chamber in Utah, most of their revenue, approximately 80%, comes from lodging taxes in Park City. Only about 7-8% of their revenue came from membership dues which is amazing. They also claim to have 1,100 members which was far more than I expected. I am guessing that they have many members that are not located in Park City, such as us, to reach that number.

There was a very surprising variety of businesses in the meeting though; I was expecting hotels, lodging facilities, ski related organizations, restaurants, shop owners, etc. In reality it was a very large mix of businesses. A few examples were concierge services, dog training, office supplies, beauty products, banks, high end cabin builders, credit unions, insurance companies, non-profit organizations, car rentals, etc. There were very few technology companies though and we were one of the only ones.

Through talking with others one of the most desirable benefits of being a member is that they provide their mailing list to any member free of charge, you can even use the chambers bulk mailing rate for mail pieces you may want to send to other members or you can obtain an email list. They also provide member-member discounts that you can take advantage of on their website. Plus the three major ski resorts give season pass discounts to chamber members.

Overall I think it was a good event, the networking was great as every person had the opportunity to introduce their company to everyone else in the room. Many cards and brochures were exchanged at the end between different members.