Is e-mail the ticket to get skiers to sleep in Carson City?

Carson City sits so close, yet so far away, from North America's densest concentration of ski resorts.

A 35- to 75-minute drive from Carson City can get a skier to 15 ski resorts around Lake Tahoe and a bit beyond.

But skiers don't flock to Carson City's motel and hotel rooms. Yet.

Candy Duncan is on a mission to turn that around and make Carson City a St. Moritz of the Sierra. Well, maybe not St. Moritz, but at least a place where skiers see value in a $40 room, usually below the snowline.

"What we really want to do is be known as a winter destination," said Duncan, executive director of the Carson City Convention and Visitors' Bureau. "If Reno can market itself as a winter destination, so can we."

Duncan has doggedly sought a winter niche for Carson City for six years but the traveling world still doesn't view Carson City as a winter destination at all.

Maybe e-mail will solve the problem of alarmingly low hotel and motel occupancy during winter.

"We've been poking at this problem for six years," Duncan said. "We just poke at it. We don't have a lot of money. But the (CCCVB) board doesn't want me to give up on winter marketing."

Duncan made the first full-fledged winter marketing effort last year, not knowing that New Year's would go bust. Instead of hitting the road for the millennium celebration, many people stayed home - they certainly didn't come to Carson City.

"We had the worst winter in history because of the millennium and no snow (until later in January)," Duncan said.

December 1999 filled only 29 percent of Carson City's guest rooms and January only 25 percent. Not that a good year is much better: The winter of 1998-99 saw occupancy rates of 38, 30 and 34 percent for December, January and February, Duncan said.

The best month, September, filled 63 percent of Carson City's rooms in 1999.

"If I could get winter numbers even into the low 40s I would be happy," Duncan said.

Duncan reasons that hotels and motels can flourish in summer if they survive the slow times in winter. Over the years, she has watched several smaller motels convert to weekly and monthly rentals because overnight visitors didn't provide enough business.

"It's very hard on lodging properties, which forces them into weeklies and monthlies, which is hard on their business," Duncan said. "We've seen a lot of properties go strictly weekly and monthly and we can't keep them (on the motel/hotel list)."

Duncan launched her first full-scale ski marketing campaign last winter with newspaper and radio advertising targeting the San Joaquin Valley from Fresno to Stockton. To this, she added direct-mail advertising to ski groups and clubs in the western states.

Duncan is charting a new course this winter without even looking back to last winter's millennium woes. She will experiment with e-mail to encourage Northern Californians to sleep in Carson City while skiing at Lake Tahoe.

"We're going to do direct e-mail marketing," Duncan said. "We will have a list of e-mail addresses of people interested in skiing in this area."

Duncan envisions a series of e-mail messages that will include a hyperlink that can be clicked to get to the visitors bureau's Web site. The $10,000 campaign will be funded with a $5,000 grant from the Nevada Commission on Tourism and a $5,000 match from the visitors bureau.

"Studies have shown us younger people are more computer savvy and use the Internet to plan travel a lot more," she said

Duncan probably won't launch her first e-mail barrage until after Christmas - though an abundant early snowstorm could get the visitors bureau tapping away at keyboards earlier.

"That's the beauty of the Internet. We can time it," she said. "If there's a great snowstorm, we can send a message when the roads clear. When there's a great storm, people think the roads stay closed. What we want to get across in the first message is we're affordable and accessible."

Duncan already has another e-mail message in mind: "We've got a 50-inch base, and a $29 room rate. What are you waiting for?"

Mike Millard isn't waiting. As general manager of the year-old Plaza Hotel, Millard may become a pioneer in winter marketing for Carson City motel/hotels.

"This is something that nobody has been committed to doing," said Millard, for whom this will be his first winter marketing the Plaza. "Skiing is a big market. Why does Carson City have zero?"

Of Carson City's four largest hotels, only the 147-room Plaza so far has fully embraced the idea of attracting skiers to sleep (and hopefully eat and even shop) in Carson City. By the time most ski resorts open, the Ormsby House will have shut down for nine months for major renovations.

Pinon Plaza and Carson Station, both under the same ownership, support Duncan's ski marketing efforts, but they see a greater return at the slotmachines from golfers than from skiers.

"Skiers are not good gamblers," said Jackie Behan, sales and marketing director for both hotel/casinos. "We've really struggled with what we can do with ski packages."

Pinon Plaza and Carson Station for the past two winters have offered vouchers with $7 or $8 discounts for Mount Rose and Diamond Peak lift tickets but Behan said demand has not been great. She wonders if the lack of ski buses, which Reno offers, is slowing Carson City's emergence as a winter destination.

Millard, on the other hand, intends to move forward with ski marketing this winter.

"I'm going to focus on it," Millard said. "What kind of turnout will we get? I don't know. We have to give skiers a hotel rate and ski rate that is appealing."

The Plaza Hotel will probably offer room-and-lift ticket combos starting at $49 a night (mid-week skiing at Mount Rose) with higher rates on weekends or at Heavenly and Diamond Peak, the other two ski resorts with which Millard wants to partner.

"We're a central hub between Reno and the ski resorts," Millard said. "We're down in the valley where there's minimal snow. And, of course, there's the room rates."