Overall, Park City’s summer visitation through August is up, but Park City Chamber Bureau CEO Jennifer Wesselhoff said the numbers vary on the type of lodging property. The more traditional hotel properties did better than the more expensive ski-in-ski-out units.
“If you look back at July, those kinds of minimized properties, occupancy was down about 2% but we were seeing rates up,” Wesselhoff said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour,” Sept. 28. “And then on the traditional hotel side, they saw a really great performance where they were up 6% for occupancy, and also rates were up about 5%.”
That performance is reflected in local tax collections, with the most recent figures from July showing increases in most categories.
“For July performance, local tax collections were the star, up about almost 20% for July,” she said. “Restaurant taxes were up 3%, Recreation, Arts and Parks taxes for July performance were up 15% and then transient room tax was the only category that was down for that July performance, which was down about 4%.”
Meanwhile, a new travel survey from Longwoods International shows Americans continue to see travel as important, despite concerns about rising costs.
“Most American travelers believe travel is too expensive,” she said. “The second takeaway was around American travelers continuing to see travel as a lifestyle need rather than a want, which is good news for us. So even with rising cost concerns, still over 80% of Americans report that vacations are one of the things that they look forward to most each year.”
Two other key takeaways were that the perceived benefit of travel outweighs the cost for 84% of American travelers and that travel demand is holding steady even after a slight softening nationwide. She said almost 90% of American travelers report they have travel plans in the next six months.
The annual Tourism Fall Forum is Oct. 28 at Park City's Grand Summit Hotel. Tickets are on sale now and include updates on lodging data and the upcoming season from Deer Valley, Park City Mountain, Woodward, the Utah Olympic Park and Ski Utah.
“Tom Kelly will be there with us this year interviewing our keynote speaker, who's going to be Shaun White. So, we're happy to have Shaun with us. He's going to talk a little bit about Snow League and what we can expect, and then of course I'll be giving a marketing update so people can hear all of the great work that we have planned to make sure that we have a successful upcoming ski season.”
The chamber has another Wasatch Back Business University event Wednesday, Oct. 6. This month’s topic is content creation and marketing that drives business.
The class runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. includes lunch at the Blair Education Center.
