Summer spending growing faster than winter in Colorado resort towns
Summer business in resort towns is growing at a faster rate than winter, revealing both a recovering economy and a shift in resort tourism.
While Colorado's high country will always rely heavily on skiers, mountain towns are seeing more summer vacationers in a trend that promises swifter growth than downhill skiing — especially if weak snowfall continues in the high country.
"This is a very big deal for us," said Michael Martelon, chief of the Telluride Tourism Board, which last summer achieved a longtime goal with summer spending in the box canyon eclipsing winter for the first time ever. Telluride's taxable sales activity set monthly records in July, August and September.
Martelon said the towns of Telluride, Mountain Village and Montrose worked together to boost regional tourism, expanding Telluride's festivals and reaching out to visitors who tend to visit the area regularly.
"I call it microtargeting," he said. "We are talking to people who we know love Telluride, and getting them to come more often is getting us to a place where we are actually able to grow our base."
Telluride joins Winter Park, Aspen, Vail, Steamboat Springs, Breckenridge and Crested Butte in posting strong summers this year, with most of those communities surpassing the pre-recession glory days of 2007. In all seven resort communities, spending from June through September is growing much faster than winter spending.
Whilelast winter's weak snowfall could have pinched spending as fewer vacationers gatheredfor ski holidays, ski-town winter spending increased in six of the seven resort communities even though visitation plummeted 10 percent, the steepest drop in decades.
Still, summer revenues grew faster.
Ford Frick, the managing director of Denver-based BBC Research and Consulting, thinks the warm, snowless weather of last winter likely helped summer business as flatlanders and urbanites fled the heat by flocking to the high country.
"I think weather was a big influence," Frick said.
While summer is growing, it's still a fraction of winter business in the big resort communities such as Breckenridge, Aspen and Vail. But winter business seems to be inching more than surging and has yet to climb back to pre-recession levels.
There are a number of trends slowing winter's recovery and spurring summer, Frick said. Aging baby boomers and second-home owners are finding summer in the high country more amenable, and growing numbers of Front Rangers pursuing close-to-home vacations — or economically driven "staycations" — are visiting the mountains for brief bursts in the summer.
"It's a combination of small factors behind this" summer growth, Frick said. "Summer is growing more rapidly, but I think there's a ways to go until summer fills the gap on winter."
Most resort communities have seen summer spending climb past high marks set in 2007. (Winter Park and Steamboat Springs have yet to reach 2007 levels.) Winter spending, though, is lagging, with only Vail surpassing the 2007-08 season. All seven resort communities together are pacing about 7 percent behind the 2007-08 winter season, while summer spending is 3 percent ahead of the once-record 2007 levels.
Resorts have been focusing on their warm-weather seasons for several years, and those marketing programs are finding footing.Federal legislation from last year encourages the Forest Service to work with resort companieson federal land to develop summer amenities and stir local economies. Vail Resorts, for example,last summer proposed a comprehensive interactive projectthat would install alpine slides, ropes courses and zip lines alongside educational programs on Vail Mountain.
Read more:Summer spending growing faster than winter in Colorado resort towns - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_22102925/summer-spending-growing-faster-than-winter-colorado-resort#ixzz2E2GwRxPn
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