The day in the life of a Public Relations Director
By: Mary Pritchard
Tags: Travel, Food, Breckenridge, Public Relations, Traveling

While Breckenridge may be a foreign town name to you, it has been on my radar for as long as I can remember. Having only ever lived in the suburbs of Atlanta, every year my family would take our annual ski trip; and it was always to Breckenridge. Since I grew up constantly vacationing there, I thought it would be cool to do an interview piece on someone working in the Tourism office as a Public Relations Director. This is everything you need to know about why you should or shouldn’t pursue a career in PR.

Austyn Dineen is a Colorado native who is currently the Public Relations Director of the Breckenridge Tourism Office. Austyn graduated from CSU with a technical journalism degree. She has been in Breckenridge for 12 years but has worked in other ski resort towns Copper Mountain. The interview took place via cell phone and most of the conversation was about how she got to where she is today and what it looks like being a PR director in Breckenridge.

Q: I saw on the website you are the public relations director; what does that mean? And what do you do specifically?

A: Breck tourism office is funded off the lodging taxes in breck. Funded to focus on travel to Breckenridge for people outside of Colorado during the spring, summer, and fall. Winter is a very popular season in breck. Goal of the tourism office is to level out the economic stability to a year-round status. Don’t focus on the winter too much. Tourism office is the main driver for summer and fall in the area.

My job as public relations director is to ensure that they are covered on their key messages during the summer and fall. They lean into winter a little, but the main actionable plan is summer and fall.

She boils out: what are the key messages we are going to go after every year?

Training people to be better guests; they want guests who are going to come to breck and be just as like-minded as the people who live there. As in, taking care of the environment, taking care of each other. They’re focused on the quality of breck.

Q: Is your workload heavier in the fall and summer then instead of winter?

A: The majority of the planning happens in winter/spring

When you get into summer and fall its more execution

The workflow is pretty even across the year, but it’s shifted in terms of what you’re doing: either planning or executing.

Q: Living in Breckenridge, do you have any favorite restaurants?

A: Aurum & Crepe A La Cart

Crepes a La Cart

Q: What is your favorite and least favorite part of your job?

A: Favorite — when coverage does run (we spend the majority of the time trying to make the right piece of coverage that is going to run) and it goes the way its supposed to.

- A piece this summer — transitioned from advertising all the fun things you can do in breck to a more safety focus and how to be covid safe in the town. They wanted to be seen as a thought leader in the industry in terms of destinations that were doing it right.

- A piece in the fall — travel and leisure, the headline was ‘what is Breckenridge doing differently than other destinations” AMAZING

- she’s been doing PR in Breckenridge for 15 years, a lot of your time is spent to go out to dinner with media/journalists, skiing, etc. having a family and doing that is hard. Your priorities change and you don’t want to be going out to dinner anymore with media.

Q: Where did you do between college and now to get to where you are?

A: Graduated from CSU in 2008. All she knew out of college is she wanted to live in Breckenridge. Junior year of college worked as a holiday help (on your breaks, SB, xmas breck, you need to work 12–15 days, you get a preseason pass). Junior and senior year worked front-line lift operator. Worked her way up by learning how the ski resort works. Got more involved in events operations. If you’re interested in getting into marketing or PR at the resort level: start at events operations. The marketing teams rely on events operations to do photoshoots, media, ads, etc. events operations are a subdepartment of marketing. Event operations was a lot of driving snowmobiles, setting up events. It was a great way to learn how the backend of coverage and everything behind the scenes happens. She worked her way up in terms of PR at the Breckenridge ski resort. She left Breck and was the communications manager at Copper Mountains for 3 years. She left PR all together and hit the media side. She worked for Swift’s communications, they own some of daily tahoe, steamboat park records (all resort publications). Then moved back to breck and has been the public relations director for 4 years.

Q: Is there anything you want to say that I didn’t ask?

A: You just have to work your way up from the bottom. It’s helpful though because you know how operations work from all angles. Don’t be too rushed to find the director level position. Learn, learn, learn. The degree is most important, specification of degree is less important