So How Much Did the Recession Hurt Ski Areas?
If you expected traffic to ski areas to be down this season, you’d be right. According to an AP story published on the site of KOB-TV, New Mexico, there were 57.1 million “skier visits” across the country, a year-to-year decline of 5.5 percent. (The 2007-08 had seen a record turnout of 60.5 million.) Coincidentally, traffic to all Colorado resorts dropped a total of 5.5 percent. (Technical note: You have to take numbers from Vail Resorts and add them to numbers from Colorado Ski Country USA. Vail does not belong to that trade association.)
Not all declines in traffic were equal, however. Aspen Ski Co reported a drop of 7.6 percent. The Snowmass Sun reports that traffic was the lowest since the 2003-04 season.
Beaver Creek traffic increased 1.3 percent, and Vail actually saw an increase of 3.3 percent. Both resorts are owned by Vail Corp, which reported an overall drop of 3.5 percent. That must mean that traffic to the company’s other resorts–Heavenly, in the Tahoe area, and Keystone and Breckenridge in Summit County, Colorado–dropped fairly significantly.
June 22, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
Wow that's a real shame. I hope it encourages resorts to be a little more creative in their offerings and maybe to give some better discounts in pricing.
June 23, 2009 @ 6:47 pm
I have to dig deeper into the statistics, but I suspect that "local" ski areas did not suffer as much of a drop-off. In fact, they may have benefited from the downturn if, say, people in the Midwest substituted an instate trip for one to Colorado or Utah.