This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
After a slow start to winter, bookings for the rest of the ski season picked up in January at Western destination resorts, according to a company that tracks the mountain lodging industry.
Ralf Garrison, director of Denver-based DestiMetrics, said the booking rate last month for January through the end of April was 9.9 percent above the pace for the same period a year ago.
That surge turned January from a worrisome month into a productive one, with a 2.9 percent year-over-year increase in occupancy and a 1.8 percent boost in revenue.
"The big jump was likely driven primarily by local and regional visitors who tend to have shorter booking times than international and long-distance domestic visitors," Garrison said.
Those travelers have shown some hesitancy to make lodging commitments this season, he added, citing sharp drops in global stock markets, exaggerated currency exchange-rate differences and dramatic weather in parts of the U.S.
For the overall season, Garrison said, occupancy rates are expected to be up 3.4 percent, with revenue climbing 4.7 percent.
Another Denver-based monitor of the lodging industry, the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report, found that the mountain resort hotels it tracks had a 67 percent occupancy in January, up from 58.7 percent a year earlier. Those hotels also were taking in an average of $333 per night, up from $326 in January 2014.
Hotels throughout the state saw an uptick last month compared to the previous year. Statewide, hotels filled 62.2 percent of their rooms nightly in January, up from 60.6 percent, with the rate rising almost $4 to $136.11.
In Salt Lake County, where around half of the rooms are located, the occupancy rate rose from 65.2 percent a year ago to 66.8 percent last month. The nightly room rate also rose about $1.50 to $116.86.
Cedar City, Ogden and Logan all had higher occupancy rates last month compared to a year earlier, while Davis County, St. George, Utah County had small declines.