Word: skiing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...During a brutal recession, you'd think a $90 lift ticket and two nights at a lodge would be a luxury. But luckily for ski-resort operators, the flakes have been flush this season. Most U.S. resorts are reporting above-average snowfalls. (Northstar-at-Tahoe, in the Sierras, clocked in with 3 ft. of new snow March 4-5.) So while revenues have slipped - particularly at retail shops and restaurants - fewer people are fleeing skiing than you'd think. Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, an industry trade group, projects that total lift-ticket purchases will decline...
...record 60.5 million lift tickets. A 6% drop would translate to some 57 million tickets sold, a figure that would beat the 55.1 million total in 2006-07, a season when the economy was still frothy but the snow was lousy. Further, in the 30 years the National Ski Areas Association has tracked such data, the industry has sold more than 57 million tickets during just six seasons, each occurring in this decade. "At the end of the day, there's an adage among operators," says Berry. "They'd rather have good snow in a bad economy than bad snow...
...huge metropolitan areas such as New York City and Boston. Mount Snow in Vermont, for example, is a four-hour trip from New York City and a two-hour trek from Boston. Its "skier days" (number of people visiting the resort, multiplied by the number of days they ski) are up 3% this season. (See which businesses are doing well despite the recession...
...Wachusett Mountain Ski Area in Princeton, Mass., has access to some 7 million people who live about an hour away in the Boston; Hartford, Conn.; and Providence, R.I., regions. And skiers are staying local: skier days at Wachusett have risen 4%. "We are drawing the people that make a spontaneous decision to go skiing," says Tom Meyers, the marketing chief at Wachusett...
...East's gain is the West's loss. According to the Mountain Travel Research Program, through Jan. 31, occupancy was down 18% at the Western ski areas, while lodging rates dropped 8%. Vail Resorts, a public company that runs four ski areas in Colorado and one in California, reported a 5.8% drop in skier visits through early January and a 7.5% decline in lift-ticket revenue. The Aspen Skiing Company, which operates the Ajax Mountain, Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass ski areas, predicts skier visits will drop between 5% and 15% this year. (See the top 10 sports moments...