An offal way of tracking South Lake Tahoe tourism... but we want all we can get.
(LAKE TAHOE REAL ESTATE BLOG) Well, we have got to hand it to the Tahoe Daily Tribune today. And this one is about as good as it gets.
It appears that our tourist industry is in the toilet, or at least the measurement of it is. Today’s local news is about tracking sewage flow data to estimate tourist visits.
According to officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District (STPUD), one can get a good count of the number of tourists here at any one time by tracking the number of toilets flushing. (There are so many puns available to have gleeful fun with this one, it staggers the imagination). It’s a dirty job, but they are apparently willing to do it. (see full article here).
The article states that average daily water use in South Lake Tahoe in December was the third-highest in 10 years, and further than average daily sewage flows were the lowest they've been over the same time period, according to statistics from the public utility district.
This data indicates a poor crap report for us in December, but , rather than hitting the fan, the proverbial s@!% flew from our recent snow storms. We know that a snow storm always jumpstarts traffic to our resort, but we must tell you we have never thought of snow from the perspective of making the sewage pipes happy.
From Jan. 12 and 13, we had millions of gallons of sewage per day, about 4 million of them to be more exact. Apparently we haven’t seen this much crap in these parts in some time.
The information is consistent with what South Shore business organizations are saying. Theirs, we suspect, is data in dollars and cents, instead of gallons with a scent.
Adam Jensen, the writer of this wonderful Tahoe Daily Tribune article, says that South Lake Tahoe Lodging Association President Jerry Bindel describes our holiday season as going "fairly well" thus far, noting an increase in travel to the South Shore after early January storms. (Thus tourist flotsam and jetsam proves there is more than one way to look at anything.)
"It's not quite as strong as in previous years, but it's not bad," Bindel said. In other words, we surmise a good fecal flow from a good snow is a good sendup from the get-go of our winter tourist season.
Most of the lodging properties within the South Lake Tahoe Lodging Association were filled to at least 90 percent capacity during the holiday season, according to Bindel. The fallout was It brought about a big bristling bevy of busy bathrooms. The more the merrier is our story, and we’re sticking to it.
The Visitors Authority uses a more traditional approach than sewage flow when analyzing the number of people in town. They look at the revenue generated by the transient occupancy tax. They look at both city of South Lake Tahoe and Douglas County tax revenues when determining visitation to the South Shore.
But we have to tell you, their approach to determining tourist data is not news of this sort, nor is it ever this much fun.
Our hats are off to the Tahoe Daily Tribune for this one, and from our perspective we want nothing more for the... er, snow... to just keep on coming.
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