For those who call Nelson home, it’s nothing new when this unique town receives great exposure. For some of us, that’s why we’re here, and when Red Bull Supernatural brought yet more light to the area it was more of the same.
“I think just the exposure for the region is always positive,” said Tom Thomson, executive director for the Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce.
“Whether it’s for Baldface or Whitewater or any of the ski operations, I think a program like the one that ran on NBC just promotes this region and the ski-ability of the area and the terrain that we’ve got up here.”
“A program like Supernatural can only expose our area to even more folks that are looking for an adventure that they’ve never had before in this area,” he said.
Thomson said that while exposure from newspaper and magazine articles sometimes garner more interest form those wanting to relocate to the area, Supernatural did still spark some interest in people.
“From the Supernatural event we’ve certainly had some telephone calls and some inquiries and I think that it’s probably just going to continue to build, especially for the people that are into the backcountry skiing type of operations,” said Thomson.
Jeff Pensiero, owner of Baldface Lodge where the Supernatural was hosted said that he has seen people interested in visiting the lodge because of the event, but he doesn’t attribute his success to that.
“It would be hard for me to say that because of Supernatural we’re doing all this business,” he said, adding that more than anything it just brings a lot of awareness to the brand.
“I think we just ran a great operation up there, and people love the new lodge… pretty much everyone that came up this year re-booked for next year and we’re already booking out into 2014.”
Thomson says that when programs like Supernatural run on a major network “It’s just tremendous for this area.”