SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – The Utah ski and snowboard industry closed the 2013-14 winter season with a total of 4,161,585 million skier day visits, up 3.6 percent from the previous season’s 4,018,812. The 3.6 percent increase marks a great success for the industry, ending above four million for the seventh time in the last nine years, and finishing as the third best season on record. Utah’s resorts have seen two years of consecutive skier day increases, up 8.8 percent since the 2011/12 season.
Although the season snowfall was slightly below average for the state, the 432-inches of snowfall in-conjunction with resort snowmaking, provided excellent conditions throughout the season. Ski Utah is confident that awareness and demand for the Utah wintersport product is continuing on a positive trajectory.
“If we had had just one more strong early storm system I have no doubt that Utah would be reporting record visitation numbers this season,” said Ski Utah President Nathan Rafferty. “Utah’s resorts did an outstanding job, both getting the word out on snow conditions and ensuring that guests had exceptional snow all winter with new and upgraded snowmaking systems.”
Nationally, skier day visits were slightly down to 56.2 million, a 1.3 percent decrease from 56.9 million the previous season. The drought and rough start to the season in the Far West (Pacific Southwest and Pacific Northwest) were mostly to blame for the decrease. All other regions experienced increased visits.
Total Utah statewide skier days for the past 10 years are as follows:
2013-14 4,161,5853
2012-13 4,018,812**7
2011-12 3,825,090**10
2010-11 4,247,510** 2
2009-10 4,070,822**5
2008-09 3,972,9848
2007-08 4,249,1901
2006-07 4,082,0944
2005-06 4,062,1886
2004-05 3,895,5789
*The National Ski Areas Association defines ‘skier days’ as one person visiting a ski area for all or any part of a day or night for the purpose of skiing/snowboarding.
