Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, special to the Daily
At first glance, a bunch of numbers jump out of a regional economic update published recently by the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. Those numbers need a bit of explanation.
The council of governments does research about and provides services for five counties in northwest Colorado: Eagle, Grand, Jackson Pitkin and Summit. The latest report measures activity between the end of the third quarter in 2019 and the same period in 2020. That quarter ends at the end of September. As you’d expect, there are a lot of declines in the report, thanks primarily to the economic punch thrown by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Partnership Content Marketing Manager Ben Dodd said work on the new VVP Connect platform began in late summer of 2020.
The valley-wide chamber then conducted its annual member survey in October and November.
“People said the No. 1 thing they were looking for was connection,” Vail Valley Partnership President and CEO Chris Romer. In a year in which seminars, after-work mixers and other events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Romer said the Partnership had to think about how it could meet that need.
That’s when work accelerated on VVP Connect. The platform is nearly ready to launch, and should in the next few weeks, Dodd said.