The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
March took a big hit last winter
[ By Mark Reaman ]
With the summer tourism season just around the corner, early indications are the busy factor is still a bit uncertain. Tourism and Prosperity Partnership (TAPP) executive director Andrew Sandstrom reported last week that overall, tourism is pacing flat with last summer. He said current numbers look strong at the beginning and end of the season compared to previous years, but “soft” in the middle.
Talking to the Gunnison Valley Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) board at their meeting on May 22, Sandstrom said his numbers seemed to be tracking early airline flight numbers. He indicated late May and June were ahead of 2025 but July and early August were lagging. September is seeing a bit of rebound but he said it’s pretty early to count on that.
“Given the poor snow last ski season we started marketing summer earlier in March. That seemed to get people aware of early summer opportunities,” he said. “We are looking at some July softness. I’d think people are waiting to make plans to see what gas prices end up doing. One thing we are spending some money on is Chicago. We want to keep our name out there with more flights scheduled next winter.”
RTA airline consultant Bill Tomcich said his latest numbers are starting to shore up summer.
Tomchich said American Airlines is starting daily service to Gunnison from Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) on June 18. “And then you have JSX out of Dallas/Love Field coming in as well just as they have for the past four summers with twice-daily service, along with expanded service on United from Houston. We’ve got a lot of seats to sell this summer, and early indications are that advance bookings seem to be mostly keeping pace with these capacity increases. I expect we’ll see at least a normal summer season.”
Tomcich and Sandstrom reviewed that last March took a dive given the warm end of the ski season and lack of snow. “From November to April the overall total airline passenger numbers were down less than one-half of 1%,” said Tomcich. “But March was down nearly 8%. That shows we did better than most mountain resort airports in Colorado and Utah. That’s good news. The Houston and Chicago flights saw big increases in passengers. American out of DFW was down more than 25%, primarily because the capacity cuts with smaller aircraft. Those capacity cuts were especially acute over the holidays. That capacity is expected to be restored next winter. Meanwhile, United was up more than 10% overall with Denver, Houston and Chicago combined.”
Sandstrom said Local Marketing District (LMD) revenues were off about 25% in March indicating the drop in visitors.
One weird note was that RTA numbers indicated March sales tax revenues were up a whopping 34% compared to 2025. RTA executive director Scott Truex said that couldn’t be accurate and he is working with the county to determine why the numbers don’t track with every other indicator.
“Basically, the high points right now are late May into June and September,” concluded Sandstrom.
