A Colorado resort town by the name of Steamboat Springs has recently taken an unprecedented initiative. In an effort to promote tourism in the resort town, the chief executive of the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association is offering customer-service training to the entire towns’ small business populace.

This idea may seem preposterous at first, given the essential goal of increasing tourism and boosting the local economy (profit maximization), it seems unlikely that offering an entire town customer-service training would be conducive to this goal.

Steamboat Springs – Source: RMS Harp

However, if we view the entire town as one firm, it is easier to perceive the end objective of this program: increasing revenue by way of improving customer experience (and by extension, demand). A parallel approach is taken by Zappos, similar in the sense that it is based off an often forgotten premise: a customer’s overall experience plays a considerable factor in their choices. And while in the short-run, this may not directly lead to increased profits (a loss may just as likely be incurred), revenue generated from new customers, along with retained existing customers in the long run, can verily make up for these costs.

All this is especially true for Steamboat Springs, a resort town. Because vacationers generally seek enjoyment as vacation time is usually scarce, they are more likely to be affected by negative interactions than any other consumer.

As a result, this unorthodox, unprecedented move by a tourism executive may pave the way for other resort towns to follow suit.