Utah ski industry optimistic
Just add snow: Three years of steady growth in winter tourism creates big hopes for 2006-07
By Mike Gorrell
The Salt Lake Tribune
Sooner or later it will snow big again.
When it does, Utah ski resorts expect another banner year.
"Our state is on a roll. Our industry is on a roll," Ski Utah President Nathan Rafferty said Tuesday at the season-opening news conference for the marketing arm of the state's ski industry.
His optimism is predicated on three consecutive years of record-breaking lift ticket sales and statistics suggesting interest in Utah continues to increase.
For instance, Rafferty said, requests in September and October for Ski Utah's "Winter Vacation Planner" were up 113 percent from the same months a year earlier. Hits on the organization's Web site are up. An informal survey of lodging companies indicates room bookings are up 15 percent to 20 percent.
In addition, the Utah Office of Tourism provided $2.5 million for advertising the past two winters, money that Rafferty said "doubled our firepower." The extra money enabled Ski Utah to buy television ads in New York City and Los Angeles, to increase its print advertising and to underwrite the latest Warren Miller film's national tour, exposing Utah powder to potential customers in 189 markets in 35 states.
Finally, Utah resorts did even better than usual in rankings by national skiing and snowboarding publications, free advertising that usually reaps big rewards because readers of Ski, Skiing and TransWorld Snowboarding magazines frequently take winter trips.
With Snowbasin and Powder Mountain each receiving plaudits in the rankings, Rafferty predicted this season could be especially fruitful for Ogden Valley resorts. The resorts are hopeful.
After both skiing magazines cited Powder Mountain's snow quality, resort spokeswoman Carolyn Daniels said "visits to our Web site went up 62 percent, compared with last October. We had a 20 percent increase in out-of-state ski club bookings. . . . And it used to be 20 people in a ski club. Now each group has twice that many."
Kevin Stauffer, Snowbasin's guest services supervisor, said his resort was relishing "coming out of nowhere" to get a No. 10 ranking in Skiing's survey. "We're a reflection of the success Utah is having, but it's exponentially higher. If they're getting 5 percent more skiers, we're getting 10 percent. But we can absorb the numbers. We have room to grow."
So does little Wolf Mountain, which is emphasizing its family orientation now that Wolf Creek Resort has acquired the two-lift operation that was Nordic Valley. "Our lodging property bookings are up 40 percent from year to year," said resort general manager Bill Cox.
The only thing the state's 13 resorts need now are cooler temperatures so snowmaking systems can be set on maximum and a break in the high pressure system that has prevented snow-bearing storms from flowing through the Intermountain West.
"Let's hope," said Rafferty.
Some hope is on the horizon, but not a lot. The National Weather Service forecast is for a cold front to bring a couple of inches of snow to the northern mountains on Thursday, with a cool westerly air flow persisting into the weekend. Another storm looks possible Sunday into Monday.
Bountiful snow three out of the past four winters is partially responsible for Utah's steadily increasing popularity with skiers and snowboarders, Rafferty said.
Local skiers come out more in good snow years, he said. A survey that Ski Utah conducted last winter, when 600-plus inches of snow fell in the Cottonwood canyons, indicated that 56 percent of skiers or 'boarders were Utahns, 41 percent were from other states and 3 percent were internationals. That ratio of Utahns to nonresidents was just about the opposite of three years earlier, when the state was coming off a couple of smaller snow years that were still better than other states.
"That was our biggest surprise in the survey," said Rafferty, who also attributed the rise to the state's growing population and Ski Utah's free-skiing programs for fifth- and sixth-graders, initiatives that encourage the students, their parents and siblings to hit the slopes more often.
mikeg@sltrib.com
Snow fun stats
* $692 million: Economic impact in 2005-06 season, (up from $650 million in 2002-03)
* $130 million: Money Utahns spent
* $563 million: Money spent by out-of-state tourists
* $269: Daily spending by nonresidents, (up from $251)
* 57 percent: Likelihood of nonresidents to return, (up from 51 percent)
* 2 percent: Increased number of snowboarders, to 28 percent from 26 percent
Source: Ski Utah
|
