Steamboat Pilot & Today

Frontier Airlines' landing might cause turbulence in the Steamboat Springs tourism industry.

The carrier is starting service to Yampa Valley Regional Airport for the 2008-09 ski season. Frontier's three daily flights from Denver will add about 24,000 round-trip seats for the season, said Andy Wirth, chief marketing officer for Intrawest, Steamboat Ski and Resort Corp.'s parent company. That pushes capacity to 175,000 round-trip seats, he said, the most the airport has seen.

Air program planners had intended to keep the seat number flat compared with 2007-08, he said.

"The marketplace will dictate whether that's an appropriate amount of capacity," Wirth said. "That's always the case."

Adding flights during an economic downturn isn't ideal, said Sandy Evans Hall, executive vice president of the Chamber Resort Association.

"What I believe is that if we're going to see any kind of dip in our economy and our tourism, this is not a winter that we'd want to have excess capacity coming in," she said.

Ski Corp. and other local planners are involved heavily in planning the ski season flights. Most other winter YVRA flights are part of a program that guarantees a set amount of revenue to the airlines that fly to the Hayden airport. Taxes from a local marketing district, along with some businesses and Ski Corp., pay the difference if that money doesn't come in.

"We've increased capacity pretty significantly over the past several years, and last year, we were not able to fill the capacity we had," Evans Hall said. "We lowered that a little bit this year by removing one of the New York flights. We were going in with 7 percent lower capacity than last year."

The air program dropped a flight to JFK International Airport. Even with the decrease, the Frontier flights bump up the number of seats 8 percent more than last season, Wirth said. The lower-cost carrier is not part of the revenue-guarantee program, and there is no discussion of its joining, Wirth said.

One cause for concern, Wirth said, is that the other flights were set up this past spring. Frontier announced its YVRA flights last week, which meant Steamboat couldn't plan for it. Air program organizers look at the number of guests Steamboat can attract and house as part of the equation.

"One of the variables in the marketplace is not only demand but also an understanding of the ratios of nightly pillows to total air capacity," he said. "With this increase, we don't have a commensurate increase in terms of nightly capacity."

The added seats launch YVRA to the level planners had hoped to see two years from now, after new rental properties open, Wirth said.

"One of the scenarios we don't want to have take place is to have a carrier not succeed over the next two years, and when we come on line with these new rental properties, not be able to service the resort," he said.

More the merrier

Despite the uncertainties, Evans Hall and Wirth welcomed Frontier. It could bring in more people by serving different markets, Evans Hall said. It also increases competition, which could lower fares. A spot-check showed that Frontier's prices often were higher than those found through Steamboat Central Reservations.

Wirth said that fares were dropping before Frontier's announcement. That follows a decrease in the per-barrel cost of crude oil, he said.

YVRA Manager Dave Ruppel said the addition of Frontier was a boon for locals traveling in and out of the valley. It's too soon to say how it will affect the ski season, he said.

"This is kind of a funny year with economic issues," he said. "People are not committing to travel plans as early as they usually do."

It's going to be an interesting year, Ruppel said with a chuckle. Wirth summed up the Frontier service in a positive light.

"We welcome them to the valley just like every local celebrating yet another means, a way to get to travel in and out of the valley," he said. "They're good folks, and we look forward to working with them."