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February was a down month for hotels statewide, but not for lodging establishments at mountain resorts.
Utah's mountain resorts filled 71.3 percent of their rooms last month, taking in an average of $317.32 per night, according to the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Lodging Report.
That left occupancy levels for the first two months of the year at 69.2 percent, up from 62.6 percent during January and February of 2015. Hoteliers charged about $11 more per night during that span.
The busy resort experience was not shared statewide, where occupancy levels dipped to 69.3 percent last month from 70.5 percent a year earlier.
In Salt Lake County, where most of the state's hotel rooms are located, only 72.6 percent of rooms were filled nightly in February, down from 76.1 percent the previous year. Room rates were up $1.41 per night, the Lodging Report noted.
Elsewhere, Cedar City hotels enjoyed much better business than a year ago, with monthly occupancy levels rising from 47 percent to 54 percent. In nearby St. George, hotels were up 2.2 percent.
While Ogden hotels had a 3 percent year-over-year gain, visitation was flat in Logan as well as Davis and Utah counties, the report showed.
Meanwhile, lodging industry tracker DestiMetrics said bookings made in February for the rest of winter and early summer were up 8.9 percent at resorts across the West.
With that boost, DestiMetrics Director Ralf Garrison said, lodging establishments were 3.6 percent ahead of the previous winter in occupancy levels, 5.2 percent in revenues.
This February was particularly good. Bookings made in February for ski vacations last month were up 19.2 percent over the same month in 2015, Garrison noted, allowing lodging establishments to "withstand the triple challenge of a volatile economy, slipping consumer confidence and balmy mid-winter weather."
DestiMetrics collects data from 290 property management companies handling 27,500 rooms at 19 mountain destination resorts in Utah, Colorado, California, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming.