An opportunity for Western Slopes's success exists because the national tourism and travel industry is growing 4% and adventure travel 10% annually. According to the Department of Commerce, the US travel and tourism industry is the nation's third largest retail industry and will be number one by the year 2000. Revenues from travel have increased approximately 100% in the last decade with US travel agencies producing over $100 billion in revenues each year. The travel and tourism market is separated into two main categories, business and leisure travel. Each contribute about 45% to total revenues. Adventure travel falls primarily under the leisure travel category. Revenues from leisure travel earned by US travel agencies were almost $50 billion annually. Reasons for this growth include a healthy domestic economy and devaluation of currency in other regions which has made travel less expensive for US residents. Leisure travel increased by 3.2% in 1997 and 2.0% in 1998. The healthy economy has increased business which in turn boosted domestic business travel 4.8% in 1997 and 3.6% in 1998. Adventure travel, a segment of the travel and tourism industry, growing 10% annually, it is one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry. More than 50% of the US adult traveling population, or 147 million people, have taken an adventure trip in their lifetime, 98 million in the past five years. Skiing is one of the activities most commonly participated in during adventure vacations. A notable trend in the travel industry is increased deregulation. Deregulation has increased competition and the need for differentiation. In many cases, the prices of airfare and other travel-related services has dropped. Additional trends include caps on agency commissions by many of the larger airlines, and increases in adventure travel.Despite the overall increase in competition, at the same time there is a lack of competition coming from other companies...
