Alta is having a "soft" year...
...and I'm not talking about powder. Read on. This will be in the papers tomorrow.
Utah ski season could set record
By PAUL FOY
AP Business Writer
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) -- Strong business at the start of the
season could lead Utah's ski resorts to top the record of nearly
3.3 million skier visits logged three years ago, an industry
official said Wednesday.
That would represent an improvement for Utah's 13 resorts over
the past two years, when the 2002 Winter Olympics, the war in Iraq, a declining national economy and last year's paltry snowfall
combined to depress sales of lift tickets.
"We will have a record year this year. It's hard not to with
the kind of snow we had," predicted Kip Pitou, president of the
industry group Ski Utah.
Pitou, who collects confidential data from Utah's ski resorts,
said he was projecting 3.4 million skier visits, up from the record
3,278,291 for the 2000-01 winter.
The figure for last year was 3,141,212.
"We need to be 4 million. We can easily handle that at our
resorts," he said.
Estimating ski area business can be tricky at this time of year.
Many of Utah's resorts will stay open for another two weeks and
late-season leader Snowbird will remain open another two months.
Colorado leads the nation with about 11 million skier visits,
about 60 percent of them from out of state. Utah's draws about 56 percent of its business from destination skiers, a category prized for spending more money than local skiers.
But Utah's resorts may have gotten too much of a good thing this winter. November and December brought regular storms, and heavy snow fell over the holidays, keeping away some skiers and closing the Cottonwood Canyons more often than usual.
Known for abundant snowfall, the Cottonwood Canyons just east of Salt Lake City are home to four of Utah's ski resorts, including Alta, which is projecting a "soft" season.
The problem: too much snow falling at the wrong times.
Heavy snowfall closed the canyon all day on Dec. 26, "a huge
check-in day" for the resort, Alta spokeswoman Connie Marshall
said.
On another four days, Little Cottonwood Canyon traffic was
strictly limited by sheriff's deputies to four-wheel-drive
vehicles. And two other days this winter the road stayed closed
until 10:30 a.m. for avalanche control, she said.
Alta tends to draw more skiers in winters when snowfall isn't so
heavy and "bluebird days" bring out the skiers, she said.
With more than half of its business from out-of-staters, Utah's
resorts depend heavily on fickle local skiers.
"If you have no snow they don't ski. If you have great snow
they don't ski" because only the hardiest venture out during
storms or for deep powder, Pitou said.
Utah resorts added millions of dollars of infrastructure before
the 2002 Winter Olympics and could accommodate a lot more skiers.
But advertising and promotion is key and "we basically get
nothing" from the Utah Legislature, he said.
Utah spends less than $1 million on tourism for the whole state.
That's less than British Columbia's Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort
spends promoting itself, he said.
To pick up the slack, Utah resorts placed 65 pages of national
advertisements for this season -- three times more than they've done
in other years.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV 03-31-04 1509MST
