Ski Industry Struggles, But Fares Better Than The DOW
February 25th, 2009Posted in Skiing Everywhere
It’s hard to miss all the deals being offered by ski resorts and ski shops these days as they try to harvest as many of the more scarce skier dollars as they can. But, is the ski business really suffering? Are all the deals saving the industry? USA Today recently did an article on how affordable a ski vacation to Salt Lake City can be these days, drawing national attention to the industry’s efforts to bolster the season’s revenues through discounting. That was a more positive spin on ski vacations than an earlier scarier piece they ran which talked about the Wall Street types who usually spend thousands on ski trips to the Rockies either canceling ski trips this winter or opting to drive to Vermont.
At the mid-point of the ski season I’ve been curious to learn how this ski season is really doing, but media reporting has been very inconsistent in its data reporting. And then there is the spin factor; what industry wants to scare away customers by saying things aren’t going to well?
On February 11 the Jackson Hole News tried to get a read on the ski business in Jackson. Snow King Resort told them business was basically the same as last winter, but gave no hard figures. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort said, in anticipation of a decline in visitors, they had adjusted their expectations downward last fall and they were pleased that they were now exceeding those revised expectations- whatever that means. One hard piece of data was that airline traffic at Jackson’s airport was down 13% in January.
The folks Vail Resorts were more forthcoming in their reporting. At their four resorts- Vail Mountain, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone – reported a 5.8% decrease in skier visits, a 7.5% drop in lift ticket revenue.
A little more bad news appeared in the February 19th Jackson paper when it reported that lodging bookings for the coming week were off 19% from last year. The previous week bookings were off only 11%. Week to week snapshots can be expected to bounce around a lot.
Taking a look and a better data set, Mountain Travel Research Program, a ski industry and travel consulting firm, reported that nationwide, in January, at the destinations it tracks, occupancy rates were 50% in 2009 compared to 60 percent in 2008. They also reported reservations taken in January 2009 for all future dates were down 18.9 percent from last year.
Not just resorts and lodging are seeing reduced revenues. A pull back in skier spending is being felt by retailers too. The Ski Industries of America reports that the snowsports market declined 1.26% from August 08 through December 2008 compared to December 2007, which isn’t bad. While specialty ski shops experienced sales declines of 4.89% and chains dropped 1.59%, the growing sales of snowsports gear on the Internet (up 11.67%) offset those other declines.
Locally, the Jackson paper reported that sales tax collections for Oct. and Nov. were actually up by 5% over 2007, so hopefully, the local sport shops shared in that boost. I haven’t heard how December went in Jackson, but in Ketchum December’s sales tax collections were terrible- off by 25% from Dec. 07.
Comparing this year to last year isn’t quiet like comparing apples to oranges, but there is a major factor which would probably show up even if the economy was still looking healthy; last winter was a stupendous winter for snowfall and great skiing. That allowed resorts and other businesses tied to them to post results that would be hard to beat when a more normal winter returned, which seems to be the case with this winter.
Overall, when compared to other sectors of the economy, the ski world isn’t doing too badly. With stocks tumbling and real estate values crumbling, single digit or low double digit declines in the world of snowports look pretty good in these tough times. I think this says alot about how important snowsports are to their fans. We’ll all pass up on a lot of other things before we pass up the opportunity to spend a great day on our favorite mountain.
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