OLYMPIC FEVER

Resorts Hope Olympics will be Golden for Snow Sports

By David Frey, 11-20-09

	Former Olympian Billy Kidd signs a poster for a fan at the Denver Ski & Snowboard Expo. David Frey photo.

Skiing and snowboarding aren’t exactly the TV spectacles that baseball and football are in this country, but every four years when the Winter Olympics roll around, they have their moment in the spotlight.

Resort operators hope the Olympics will inspire more people to get out on the slopes this winter, and more traveling skiers to avoid Vancouver’s crowds to come to ski areas south of the border.

“The Olympics coming up are going to bring so much attention to the sport of skiing and ski resorts,” says Billy Kidd, a former Olympian and director of skiing at Colorado’s Steamboat Mountain Resort, as he signs posters for fans wearing his trademark Stetson hat at the annual Denver Ski & Snowboard Expo.

Kidd hopes the Olympics inspires more people to head out to the slopes. Several resorts are capitalizing directly on the Olympics. Steamboat, famous for producing more Olympians than any other town in the country, may be sending another 20 to the Games this winter, Kidd says. Olympic ski racer Lindsey Vonn has a contract to promote Vail, her hometown ski resort. Aspen, with the women’s World Cup, the X Games and the U.S. snowboard team lingering to train after the X Games, can boast being one of the few venues in the state to have Olympic skiers in competition outside the Winter Games in Vancouver.

The dollar’s comparatively low exchange rate with foreign currencies could make U.S. resorts more appealing for international visitors. At Aspen, bookings started out lower than last year, says spokesman Jeff Hanle, but where last year leveled off at about this time, this year they seem to be slowly but steadily rising. He’s hoping for stronger bookings from places like Brazil, whose economy is booming and reservations have been “gangbusters,” and maybe Great Britain, where cashing in pounds for dollars to ski across the pond may be a bargain compared to dropping Euros to ski in the Alps.

“For us, success is to hit last year and exceed it slightly,” he says.

After a recent visit to ski shows in Great Britain, Colorado Ski Country USA Executive Director Melanie Mills says interest seems unusually high North American ski trips. “These are people planning to travel, not saying, ‘We hope to go there some year,’” Mills says.

Many plan to avoid Canada to sidestep Olympic mayhem, she says. That may be true for Canadians, too, says Mills, who’s hoping more skiers from the Great White North come to Colorado.

People who “hunkered down” last year may be ready to spend money on vacations this year, Mills says, and signs of global recovery may have people thinking about booking vacations again.

“We seem to have stabilized,” she says.

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