Live visitor guides join past at Coors
Self-guided tours to take over, but beer's still free
By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Photos By Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky
Visitors gather in the lobby of the Coors Brewing Co. in Golden to wait for a tour guide. Starting April 11, the brewer will substitute a self-guided audio tour for live guides. The tour will still feature a complementary beer tasting.
The self-guided tour will skip a few stops, such as the beds where the barley germinated into malt.
Cans whiz along in the bottling facility at the Golden brewery, which is the largest in the world.
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Big changes are brewing for one of the Denver area's hottest tourist draws - but you'll still get to quaff free beer.
Come April 11, living, breathing tour guides no longer will lead visitors through the innards of Coors Brewing Co.'s vast Golden brewery.
Instead, visitors trekking through the world's largest brewery will hold a device to their ear to get a self-guided audio tour.
The brewery tour will remain free of charge. Visitors can take it at their own pace. And "tour reps" will be stationed along the way to answer questions.
Coors spokeswoman Aimee Valdez said the revamp is being done "to accommodate more guests year-round."
"The tours have been operating at capacity during the summer, and visitation has been increasing at about 8 percent annually," she noted.
Coors has been holding public tours since 1951. Last year, it hosted about a quarter million visitors.
In 2006, the brewery was the No. 2 tourist draw in the Denver area, according to a survey commissioned by the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau.
It ranked behind lower downtown and ahead of Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
Denver booster Rich Grant, a spokesman for the metro visitors bureau, predicted the new tour format would be "just as popular" as the human-guided tour.
"People can go at their own pace," said Grant. "For people who haven't been on the tour for years, this reinvents the tour."
Initially, the tour will be available in three languages: English, Spanish and Japanese.
The hand-held audio devices - to be worn around the neck - will give visitors the option of pushing a button to hear more information at each stop.
The tour will take a slightly different route, with fewer stairs and elevators, according to Valdez.
"Visitors will receive more information than before," she said.
But they will not stop at the kiln, where the malt is roasted, or the barley-germination beds.
Other tour stops will stay the same, including the brew house and its 50 copper kettles and packaging, where bottles and boxes whir around on conveyor belts.
The audio tour will last 30 to 40 minutes vs. 45 minutes for the guided tour.
Valdez said Coors will boost the number of permanent employees involved in the new tour to 14 from four, while eliminating 13 part-time positions.
And, yes, people will still get to visit the lounge afterward to try up to three 8-ounce samples of free beer - assuming those doing the tasting are at least 21. Water and soft drinks will be available.
fillionr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2467
The Coors brewery
* Location: Golden
* Year opened: 1873, same year company founded
* Capacity: 20 million barrels a year
* New tour format: Self-guided audio tour
* Begins: April 11
* Hours: Thurs. thru Mon., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sun., noon to 4 p.m.; Tues. and Wed., closed.
* Cost: Free
* Tour information: 303-277-BEER
Comments
Posted by LOUIE on March 29, 2008 at 11:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
No Pete, you're going to let a machine tell the story of your family, and the empire it built? No doubt it is an exemplar of machines and computers, but it was built with the generations of your family's flesh and blood. Not one machine or computer can run without that one special oil: the human being. No machine will ever be the heart nor soul of man's greatness, nor God's guidance in those achievements. Keep the person in personal, it has a much better image in today's world of automation. Respectfully,
Posted by rezdawg8 on March 30, 2008 at 8:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I find it extremely hard to believe that in this day and age that this is nothing short of a cost cutting measure. I truly hope that there really is an increase in full time employees and a reduction in part time workers, but I will believe it when I see it! Any insiders out there with the real scoop?
I also agree that just based on the premise of replacing "real" guides with machines is also a big mistake. Maybe they didn't want, need or care to find bi and tri ligual guides?
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