The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
RTA perplexed by stats
By Mark Reaman
Despite an increase in airline flights into Gunnison bringing more passengers during ski season, the overall number of visitors to the valley appears to be declining — a trend that’s making members of the Gunnison Valley Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) scratch their heads. The conundrum was discussed at the May 9 board meeting and RTA representatives would like to ideally drill down on data to have a clearer idea of what the trend is for the area.
Responding to a question from RTA board member and county commissioner Liz Smith, Gunnison County Tourism and Prosperity Partnership (TAPP) executive director John Norton said tourist visitation was down last ski season. “My analysis is that we have lost a lot of the national market,” he said. “Going back decades, if flights were up then skier days were up. Now flights are just a fraction of winter numbers. We’ve become very dependent on the Front Range and the Front Range didn’t show up this winter. Local Marketing District collections (from lodging taxes) were down about 20% in February. I don’t think sales tax was that far down, but we had a soft winter.”
RTA board member and Crested Butte mayor Ian Billick said from the town’s perspective, “it feels like the community is changing in terms of how we understand the different types of people coming through.
Thirty years ago, we had tourists, full-time residents and second homeowners,” he said. “Now I feel we have more diverse ways that people come through the community. “People can remotely work and live here for example. So, we see a disruption in the historic relationship between tourism and visitation. If we can develop a better understanding of the different categories of people coming into the community, we’ll have a better understanding of long-term trends. If Vail Resorts is down, what does that mean for planes? I know TAPP has been talking about it and we see that issue popping up in different contexts.”
“That’s a great point,” said Smith. “We have seen a contraction in ways businesses have embraced a location-neutral workforce since the pandemic. There are new macro trends.”
“It’s a challenging problem,” added Billick.
“There is no question that the new primary homeowner is having a positive impact on the air program,” said Norton. “We can now support three flights a day from Denver and that is important to continue. It makes it comfortable for people to book Denver to Gunnison flights. It’s our most important flight.”
RTA air consultant Bill Tomcich informed the board that the number of passengers who flew into the Gunnison Airport last ski season was up 16%.
“The idea that we would experience double digit declines in bus ridership numbers while our flight numbers are going up has not been intuitive at all,” said Billick. “It’s fascinating.”
“Do we know specific skier day numbers year over year?” asked RTA board member Laura Puckett Daniels.
Incoming TAPP executive director Andrew Sandstrom said they don’t. “We don’t get that from Vail Resorts. We are able to use our location data tracking to get a good sense of it. It’s not perfect but it helps us to understand the trajectory of skier visitation.”
RTA executive director Scott Truex said winter bus ridership was down 7.5% while March took a 12% hit from 2024. He said one hypothesis discussed at a recent state bus conference was ridership was down at different ski resorts given the dearth of snow. “With less snow, perhaps people felt more comfortable driving their cars. When there is a storm people would rather use the bus,” he said.
“Is there any way to dial it in more and see where a ridership drop is coming from?” asked Puckett Daniels. “Is it that or is it something more internal like scheduling or communication?”
“A big piece of ridership might be that locals were skiing less last season when the conditions weren’t great,” said Sandstrom.
“If there are less people in town, workers could have their hours cut and there would be less worker demand for RTA bus services in a declining tourism year,” added Norton.
“That makes sense. And remember that last year was a good snow year and a huge year for ridership,” said Truex. “Though our numbers are down, it was still the second biggest year we’ve ever had.”
“My intuition is that it had to do more with fewer people skiing than fewer employees riding the bus to work,” said Billick.
“I hope we can get more solid data,” said Puckett Daniels.
RTA board member and Crested Butte councilmember Anna Fenerty said she works at the Old Town Inn and they saw fewer guests this season but employee hours were not cut. “There are probably lots of little factors,” she said.
“For the RTA I’d want to determine the factors impacting bus numbers and the long-term trends,” reemphasized Puckett Daniels. “In the bigger context, there could be a community conversation about tourism. Some people here feel Crested Butte is over-marketed, over-busy and overrun. Some of the numbers are starting to say that’s not true. So, it’s part of having the conversation with our community. It’s a complicated conversation. If we can have an accurate understanding, we can drive our conversations in the county more effectively.”
“It’s a great conversation that speaks to always striving to have better models to understand what is going on,” concluded Smith.