{"id":25160,"date":"2019-06-10T17:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T23:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/mountain-west-sets-winter-lodging-record-despite-consumer-pushback-against-rising-rates\/"},"modified":"2019-06-11T06:57:31","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T12:57:31","slug":"mountain-west-sets-winter-lodging-record-despite-consumer-pushback-against-rising-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/mountain-west-sets-winter-lodging-record-despite-consumer-pushback-against-rising-rates\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain West sets winter lodging record despite consumer pushback against rising rates"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The Fireside Inn Bed & Breckenridge in Breckenridge, shown in this Summit Daily file photo, had a great winter. Overall, lodging at western mountain destinations had another record-setting winter season with new highs in occupancy rates, average daily rate and revenue.<\/strong>
Heather Jarvis \/ hjarvis@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

FRISCO \u2014 Tourists might be pushing back against rising room prices, but that hasn\u2019t stopped western mountain destination lodging properties from breaking records this winter.<\/p>\n

In its latest DestiMetrics\u2019 monthly market briefing, Inntopia<\/a> is reporting participating western mountain destinations across six states have produced all-time records for occupancy, average daily rate and revenue with the final results for winter 2018-19 now in.<\/p>\n

Inntopia is a Denver-based market research firm that tracks these figures at participating mountain resort destinations, including multiple properties operating in Summit County. The winter season covers November through April, with the final month seeing only a slight increase. However, as of April 30, actual occupancy was up 5.6% compared with the previous season while the average daily rate was up a scant 0.7% and revenue posted a 6.5% gain. Needless to say, the firm has attributed this winter\u2019s surge to the season\u2019s abundant snowfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mountain travel industry has much to cheer about this winter as most destinations had an excellent season,\u201d Inntopia\u2019s senior vice president of business operations and analytics Tom Foley said in a prepared statement. \u201cThe season started out a bit tentatively due to the \u2018snow hangover\u2019 from the previous season and some awkward timing of school holidays. But many properties adapted by lowering December rates to attract visitors, and once excellent slope conditions were clearly established, the season just moved from strength to strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, the firm saw the northern Rockies benefit from dry spells in the far West and southern Rockies, Foley explained over the phone. With more even snowfall across the U.S., he said the northern Rockies were forecast to return some of last year\u2019s market share to other areas. That didn\u2019t quite materialize, as gains were realized across the Northern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was really a year when everybody won,\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n

Beaver Run Resort and Conference Center in Breckenridge was one of the lodging properties that won big pretty much all season long.<\/p>\n

Beaver Run is one of the properties in Summit County that regularly reports its occupancy statistics, average daily rate and revenue to the Denver-based firm that collects and tracks this data. Speaking only about Beaver Run\u2019s season, director of sales and marketing Bruce Horii recalled that November \u2014 which brought more than 80 inches of snow to Breckenridge Ski Resort, the second highest snowfall recorded for the month in the past 20 years \u2014 really got this year off to a fast start. The heavy traffic continued throughout the holiday season, which is fairly typical for Summit County, and into late January and February, which brought more snowfall.<\/p>\n

Thinking a later-than-usual Easter holiday might stifle late-season traffic, Horii said Beaver Run was cautious about expecting too much from March and April this year. However, the season\u2019s strong start and midseason momentum apparently spilled into spring, as Horii said those two months exceeded all expectations and capped off an exceptional winter for the resort.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, the strength of the season was very good and probably better than we had predicted given the time frame for Easter,\u201d he said. \u201cAnecdotally, it means that if we have good snow, it kind of trumps a lot of other factors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The towns of Breckenridge, Silverthorne, Dillon and Frisco all reported significant month-over-month gains in lodging sales tax receipts throughout the winter.<\/p>\n

In terms of occupancy rates, Foley said, Mountain West destinations have broken records two of the past three winters with this year surpassing the previous record from winter 2016-17.<\/p>\n

Looking at the average daily rate, he said, it has been steadily increasing every year since winter 2009-10 and broken records every winter since 2013-14.<\/p>\n

The latest record-breaking figure continues \u201ca very long upward trajectory,\u201d Foley said, but the growth has slowed dramatically this year, which left him to call it \u201ca hard-achieved record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with a booming national economy and the winter\u2019s great snowfall, he said, slowing growth in average daily rate indicates there may be some consumer pushback against the rising room prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnecdotally, we know that\u2019s true, and we can see the data that supports that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, western mountain destinations did \u201ca nice job finding the sweet spot\u201d with pricing and, in doing so, achieved record revenue driven more by occupancy than average daily rate, Foley said.<\/p>\n

Now, attention turns to the summer lodging season that runs from May through October.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fireside Inn Bed & Breckenridge in Breckenridge, shown in this Summit Daily file photo, had a great winter. Overall, lodging at western mountain destinations had another record-setting winter season with new highs in occupancy rates, average daily rate and revenue.Heather Jarvis \/ hjarvis@summitdaily.com FRISCO \u2014 Tourists might be pushing back against rising room prices, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 21:24:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25178,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25160\/revisions\/25178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}