Hotels in Colorado’s mountain towns are starting to book up for the upcoming ski season.
So far, winter bookings for resort communities across the U.S. are mostly flat compared to the same time this year, according to data provider DestiMetrics. But occupancy at Colorado lodging properties is down 2.4 percent, the data show.
“What I actually attribute it to is probably the fact that Colorado has some of the more expensive resorts in the industry, and economics are the forces that are at play right now,” said Tom Foley, a senior vice president at Inntopia, which runs DestiMetrics.
The average rate for a room in Colorado is $722, compared to $695 industrywide, Foley said.
Of course, it’s still very early in the ski season. Foley cautions against reading too much into the numbers before the snow has started falling in places like Denver. Both the Denver metro and the state’s mountain communities have been unseasonably warm and dry this November. Colorado’s snowpack is lagging behind seasonal averages, with ski resorts starting to open.
“Backyard snow is a huge driver, and that’s what people see out their window … We know that if it snows in an urban center, reservations at the local mountains go up,” he said.
Concerns that the economy is wobbling at the same time that President Donald Trump’s trade policies push up prices are front and center heading into ski season. Even though people are still spending money, confidence in the direction of the economy is near historic lows.
“Consumer confidence is actually almost a bit of a false lead right now because it’s so low, and yet we see consumer spending continuing on,” Foley said.
But it might not take much to knock spending down if there is an economic hitch.
A drop in international tourism is another headwind for Colorado’s resort towns. International bookings in Colorado this winter are down 28 percent this winter, Destimetrics data show. That’s not great, but it could be worse. Overseas visits to ski towns this winter are down 37 percent nationwide, Foley said. International travel to the U.S. started drying up earlier this year as Trump’s trade wars and staunch anti-immigrant stance turned off overseas visitors.
Good snow will be even more important than usual for the bottom line in Colorado resort communities this year, according to Foley.
“As we look at the economy and where it is, snow will be the differentiator for this ski season … Snow is the one thing that overcomes economic problems. We saw that coming out of the recession. We saw it coming out of the pandemic. So we'll look for snow to start falling sooner than later,” he said.
