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Hotel bookings are down at Utah, Western ski resorts; will recent snows help reverse that slide?

Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune file photo Skiers and snowboarders ride the Payday lift at Park City Mountain Resort in 2012.

All of this snow the past couple of days has to be good for lodge owners at mountain resorts across the West, including Park City, where business is lagging due to too much unseasonably pleasant weather.

“Meager snowfall at most Western ski resorts during January has led to a drop in bookings for the remainder of the ski season as lodging properties maintain a tenuous hold on revenue,” said Tom Foley, vice president of business intelligence for Inntopia, which tracks lodging performance at resort destinations.

Compared with a year ago, occupancy was down 4.4 percent during January at the 290 property-management companies tracked by Inntopia at 20 resorts in Utah and six other Western states.

While Vermont-based Inntopia does not break out its results for Utah resorts, the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Lodging Report does, offering similar statistics. Its report for January showed that occupancy at Utah’s mountain resorts fell to 62.1 percent nightly from 68.6 percent last year.

Worse yet, Inntopia said, bookings made during January for trips to mountain destinations through June plunged 15.4 percent from a year ago. And since many people make last-minute reservations when forecasts of powder are looming, January’s minimal snowfall was reflected in a 24 percent drop in January bookings for later in the month.

“Occupancy has moved from being slightly up in November,” Foley said, “to essentially flat in December to measurably down as of Jan. 31 for the first year-over-year decline in winter-season occupancy since 2011-12.”

This winter’s redeeming feature, both reports showed, is that rooms cost much more this year.

At Utah’s mountain resorts, the Lodging Report said, rates rose to $378 a night from $340 in January 2017. Across the West, Inntopia added, the average nightly rate was up 7.3 percent, enough to more than offset the number of empty rooms.

Weaker occupancy totals were not confined to the mountains.

Hotels statewide and in Salt Lake County fell short of matching their performances from a year earlier. Salt Lake County occupancy slipped to 65.7 percent in January from 68.4 percent last year, while statewide numbers decreased from 63 percent in 2017 to 61.3 percent last month.

St. George and Cedar City lodging establishments experienced slight declines in January, while increases occurred in Utah and Davis counties, Ogden and Logan, and other parts of Utah.