Lake Tahoe sets example for summer tourism trend
This story on mountain town summer tourism trends ran in the Tahoe Tribune, Reno Gazette Journal and was picked up by the Associated Press.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) – For years mountain towns in places like Colorado and Utah essentially closed down when the chairlifts stopped spinning in the springtime. Locals might have embraced summer opportunities, but ski area marketing departments were less apt to aggressively pursue summer traffic.
That’s all changed, said Tom Foley, director of operations for DestiMetrics – a Denver, Colorado-based organization that tracks mountain lodging bookings at 19 western mountain destinations in California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Oregon and Wyoming.
“All mountain destinations are learning that a single winter season does not a business make,” Foley said in an interview with the Tahoe Daily Tribune. “Summer is a season of opportunity,” especially with increasingly unreliable winters.
DestiMetrics recently reported record summer lodging occupancy and revenue numbers for the third consecutive summer across the West, with individual markets up anywhere from 2 to 14 percent.
“It’s not a fluke. It’s the result of good marketing,” Foley said.
But for Lake Tahoe it’s nothing new, and in some respects the region is leading by example….
Sebastian Foltz 