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Utah court gives Vail access to most of Park City ski area terrain
 A Utah District Court ruled Wednesday that Park City Mountain Resort officials failed to renew their historic lease for a majority of their ski terrain and the landowner is allowed to lease the ski area's upper terrain to a new operator.
That means Vail Resorts just won the rights to more than two-thirds of the land beneath Utah's most popular ski area. And it means that Park City Mountain Resort owner Powdr Corp. will go down in history as captaining the ski industry's most costly clerical error: a days-late filing to renew their decades-old, sweetheart lease could forever change their flagship ski area, which has seen Powdr invest more than $100 million.
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Destination Visits Finished Strong, Summer Looks Bright
 Resorts East and West saw destination visits increase in the 2013-14 season, and revenues for summer lodging are poised for double-digit growth, according to the latest data from DestiMetrics.
DestiMetrics draws its data from a sample of approximately 300 property management companies in 31 mountain destination communities across six Western and seven Eastern states/provinces (Colorado, Utah, California, Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming, New York, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Massachusetts and Quebec).
Among the 11 Eastern resorts that participate in its program, DestiMetrics found season-long occupancy was up 2.9 percent compared to last year, while revenues were up 3.7.
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Western drought clips skier visits across U.S
 One of the worst winters ever on the West Coast dragged total visits to the nation's ski resorts down to the third-lowest mark in a decade.
The National Ski Areas Association's tally of U.S. skier visits for the 2013-14 season reached 56.2 million, a decline of 1.3 percent from last season and below the 10-year average of 57.3 million. Blame it on the lingering drought in California, where visits to ski resorts dropped 27.8 percent. Visits to resorts in the Pacific Northwest, which shared the super-snowless start to the season, declined 27.5 percent. The West Coast's dry 2013-14 season sunk resort visits to the second-lowest mark in 36 years.
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American hotel association to fight Airbnb and short-term rentals
 The hotel industry is finally mustering its considerable public relations and lobbying muscle to tackle the topic of short-term online rental companies, such as Airbnb. In a message to its members yesterday, the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA), announced that it plans to work across the country to battle against the current practices of short-term rental companies. The association, whose members represent 52,000 properties, says it has crafted a campaign to "highlight the bad, unfair and in some cases unlawful business practices employed by short-term online rental companies and the lack of parity between safety, security, tax, and other requirements for hotels and short-term online rentals.
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OTA Rankings Show It's Not All About Price
 Even in the price-driven world of mega-OTAs, customer satisfaction depends on more than rock bottom prices, and that gives the veterans an edge, according to a new ranking of OTAs.
That's the encouraging finding of the latest JD Power Online Travel Agency Satisfaction Report, in which the two oldest OTAs held off seven later arrivals to the crowded field.
Travelocity, Sabre's site and the very first online booking site, took the gold, with a score of 804 out of a possible 1,000 points. Expedia came in second in the tight race, scoring 798.
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AAA says Memorial Day travel will be up
 AAA projects 36.1 million Americans will journey 50 miles or more from home during the Memorial Day travel weekend, a 1.5 percent increase from the 35.5 million people who traveled a year ago. While segments of the economy are mending more slowly than anticipated, improvements in disposable income, consumer spending and in the employment outlook should be enough to boost the 2014 Memorial Day travel above the most recent 10-year average. "We sense that Idahoans, too, have a little cabin fever and are ready to hit the roads, skyways and byways to kick off the summer travel season," said AAA Idaho spokesman Dave Carlson. The holiday period is defined as Thursday, May 22, to Monday, May 26.
Source: Idaho Mountain Express & Guide. Read More...
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Travel is the next industry to get turned upside down by mobile
 The travel sector is one of the most prone to transformation by technology. As soon as the Internet burst into the mainstream, it was clear that the days of traditional travel agents were numbered. It's impossible for a hotel company to ignore TripAdvisor. It's impossible for an airline to ignore the internet; along with the TSA, blame the internet for your poor flight experience -- it's because of online price comparison that airlines compete almost only on price. Now that the second wave of the internet -- mobile -- is upon us, the transformation is going to be even more extensive. The first step is the obvious: What we used to do on websites, we now increasingly do on mobile. Checking out reviews with apps like TripAdvisor, booking your trip with apps like HotelTonight, and so on.
Source: CITE World. Read More...
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Everything you need to know about iBeacon and the travel industry
 Personalization. Merchandising. Loyalty. Omni-Channel. Social. But what about iBeacon? These are some travel industry watch-words to be mindful of as we strive to better know and accommodate our passengers and guests. This is especially true as the fight for the traveler's business heats-up and conversion rates become more critical. The up-sell and cross-sell of products and services are the razor's edge on which profitability lies. Up until recently, airlines have been unprofitable, in some cases highly unprofitable. But the up-sell of ancillary products and services has helped put airlines back in the black while the cross-sell (hotel rooms, car rentals) is what currently drives profitability (see chat below). So the question of how to provide the right offer at exactly the right time is more important than ever.
Source: tnooz. Read More...
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Steamboat ski season flight program seeks new destination cities, focuses seats on peak demand days
 The managers of Steamboat's ski season flight program are looking for opportunities to initiate new service from additional hub cities, particularly during periods of peak demand.
#Steamboat Ski and Resort Corp. Airline Program Manager Janet Fischer told the board of the Local Marketing District on Friday that concentrating available seats to Steamboat during times of peak demand has been an effective strategy in recent winters.
#"That's one of the real positives of this winter - the performance of our contracted flights have really improved significantly in terms of load factors and yield," Fischer said. "We're focusing our service on the peak. Peak performs better."
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Travel Agents Link Up to Oppose Transparent Airfares Act
 Consumer and travel industry groups joined forces to express their "unequivocal" opposition to the Senate Commerce Committee adopting a companion bill to the House bill, the Transparent Airfares Act of 2014 (H.R. 4156). Led by the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) and the Business Travel Coalition (BTC), scores of major agencies and associations expressed opposition in a letter to Senators Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ayotte (R-NH), chair and ranking member respectively of the Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security of the Senate Committee on Commerce.
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Consumer sentiment dips in May
 The preliminary May reading of the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters consumer sentiment index slumped to a reading of 81.8, down from 84.1 in April. Economists polled by MarketWatch expected a 85.0 reading.
Stocks hit session lows after the report was released. Read stock market live blog Markets watch sentiment levels to get a feeling for the direction of consumer spending. "The main concern behind the small May loss involved dispiriting trends in wages," UMich survey director Richard Curtin said in a statement. According to the Labor Department, average hourly wages were up only 1.9% year-on-year in April. That's a lot slower compared to wage gains before the Great Recession and a potential restraint on future U.S. growth.
Source: The Wall Street Journal MarketWatch. Read More...
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| Mountain Travel News, issued by DestiMetrics, is designed to provide relevant and timely market information to the destination mountain travel industry. |
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Attendance Up 40 Percent at 2014 Destination Summit
Organizers of the 2014 Destination Summit announced a 40 percent increase in attendants to the annual gathering of mountain travel and marketing technology executives held this year in Denver from May 12-15. Now in its second year, the Destination Summit is produced by DestiMetrics in conjunction with marketing and technology firms Inntopia, based in Stowe, Vermont, and Ryan Solutions based in Ohio and Edwards, Colorado.
Together the three firms represent the foremost entities serving the mountain travel industry with big data coupled with new technology and leading knowledge-base assessments of the operational landscape. Joined by more than 20 other technology enablers, the event drew over 250 attendees from around US and Canada.
"In just its second year, Destination Summit has now firmly established itself as the forum for the advancement of travel marketing technology within the mountain travel industry, and we couldn't be more pleased with this year's presentation and the positive feedback we've received from attendees," says Garrison.
Garrison adds that DestiMetrics' participation in the Destination Summit is part of its Knowledge Base initiative and joins The ASSEMBLY, held each January in conjunction with the SIA Snow Show. The two events complement DestiMetrics' quarterly webinars and monthly briefings, as part of its strategy to help industry leaders turn data into information, and then to extract the knowledge that produces results.
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Webinars Now Available in Library
Both of our recent Season's End webinars are now available to Subscribers.
East - April 17
West - May 13
They may be accessed by logging in to www.destimetrics.com and going to the Library page.
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DestiMetrics on
the go....
Upcoming presentations and appearances
Vail Town Council & Vail Economic Advisory Council
Vail, CO
Jun. 3, 2014
Colorado Hotel & Lodging Association
Avon, CO
Jun. 5, 2014
Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce
Jackson, WY
Jun. 10, 2014
Breckenridge Resort Chamber
Annual Meeting
Jul. 10, 2014
Breckenridge, CO
Note: If you're planning on attending any of these events and would like to schedule a time to meet, please contact Katie Barnes at [email protected] or 970-390-4370.
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