The Personal Touch
Collectively, Royal Gorge’s guides lead 30 trips a day during the busy summer season. Brown believes that, while zip lining is intrinsically fun, at the end of the day it’s the guides that keep customers coming back. To maintain a high level of customer satisfaction, he released seven guides who didn’t fit the customer service profile when he became manager.
“I place a premium on personal interaction with people,” says Brown. “If our guides aren’t really in the mood that day, then I don’t send them out. If they can’t understand how important the guests are to their livelihood, they don’t belong here. Guides know that this is our expectation, and they rise to the occasion.”
He plans to spread his gospel, too. Brown is in the process of creating a guide-training program through Colorado State University’s Pueblo branch. The program will debut next year.
Competition
Brown says he’s seeing more zip lines popping up in the area—at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, and a new one in nearby Salida.
One way Royal Gorge stands out, says Brown, is by keeping tours at eight or fewer people, so there’s not a lot of standing around—a philosophy the company subscribed to well before there were more players in the game. It seems to be working: Royal Gorge sees more than 50,000 visitors a year, and is currently Trip Advisor’s number-one rated Southern Colorado tourist attraction.
Zipline courses at Royal Gorge offer views of the 14,000-foot Sangre De Christo mountain range.
Competition for tourism dollars is on the rise. But in God’s Country, surrounded by the 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the freedom of sailing through the air on a zip line appears to be a popular choice. Through all its programs and innovations, Royal Gorge plans to keep it that way.
