The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Counting on new snow to help
By Mark Reaman
The early part of the 2024-25 Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski season has sent mixed signals according to the Tourism and Prosperity Partnership (TAPP). More people are flying into the valley but overall, visitation is down.
“We have been struggling to understand the ski season,” TAPP executive director John Norton told the Gunnison Valley Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) board of directors at the February 21 meeting. “There has been a precipitous drop of visitors to the valley this season, but the air programs are doing pretty darn well. Historically, a great air season translates to a great visitor season but that has not been the case this year up to February.”
Norton said there was a 9% increase in air passengers flying into Gunnison during December and January compared to last season. He said it appears local users have doubled in part because of tightening air fares between GUC and Denver along with better reliability in Gunnison. He said of approximately 16,000 passengers in that period, a quarter of them were locals.
“The bad news is that overall winter visitation is about 12% down in the same period,” he said. “That’s the single biggest winter decline year over year I’ve ever seen. Hopefully that last storm with all the new snow helps.”
Norton cited a Skimag.com survey showing what he called “some pretty deep problems with visitor’s intent to return relative to other ski areas.” He said that metric was very low with an assortment of complaints listed about the ski area. “I think we will end up with a great year but not a great visitation winter,” he said.
RTA board member Ian Billick said he was having a hard time putting all the pieces together for why visitations would be down so much. He said the Mountain Express had a record day during the last storm cycle.
Norton said visitors that come to ski by air have historically been great bus riders. He said the visitors from the Front Range that drive here are probably less inclined to hop on the bus.
Billick asked RTA executive director Scott Truex to touch base with CBMR officials to see if they could provide some insight.
Truex and RTA air consultant Bill Tomcich said they recently had a productive meeting with new CBMR vice president and general manager JD Crichton. Tomcich said Crichton promised “to rustle up some marketing support” for the new direct Chicago flight. “He did mention that January numbers were down and said the lack of snow was a factor,” Tomcich said. “While Vail doesn’t release specific numbers, the numbers have been rising since the February storm.”
Tomcich said according to Destimetrics, a company that tracks lodging visitors to mountain resorts, the industry as a whole experienced a significant softening of booking pace in January.
“The lean snow in January seems to have been a big factor for the Front Range skiers,” added Truex.
Norton noted that Vail Resorts sold fewer Epic passes this year than last and that too could be a contributing factor. “Our guestimate is that that the drive market, primarily Denver, is down 25% from last year,” he said. “Ten years ago, Denver wasn’t an important market for us. We relied more on destination markets like Atlanta, Oklahoma City and New Orleans. That has gone down so there is more reliance on Denver.”
Norton said the northern part of the state received better snow in the early ski season than Crested Butte and so those skiers probably went there. “CBMR’s snow reporting during this last big storm wasn’t working well and was greatly understating how much snow we got. That wasn’t helpful. Accurate snow reporting in a big storm matters when we are trying to attract people to come and ski.”
Truex said RTA bus ridership was down about 11% in January. He cited the lack of snow driving skier traffic from Gunnison and also noted that with fewer visitors coming to CBMR, there was likely less of a need for employees. He said during the mid-February storm, the RTA, like Mountain Express, experienced some record ridership days.
Norton indicated the hope is that spring break and more snow will staunch the decline in visitor numbers for the ski season.
