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It would take unheard of walk-up business at the Wine Festival at Steamboat this weekend to boost lodging occupancy to 2008 levels for the first weekend in August.

The combination of the wine festival and a Triple Crown baseball tournament last summer produced the biggest tourism weekend of the season, when 13,300 guests spent the night here Aug. 2, 2008. It was also the last big peak of the summer. But Triple Crown World Series events won't have the same impact this year.

With the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association's lodging barometer projecting as of Wednesday that 9,100 visitors would be here Saturday night, this still could prove to be the busiest weekend of the summer. Late reservations accounting for about 1,800 more visitors would be enough to push Saturday's occupancy past that of July 4, when 10,800 people were in town.

Sandy Evans Hall, Chamber executive vice president, said although the wine festival might be down modestly this year, the rhythm of Triple Crown business is having a larger effect on this weekend's lodging.

Steamboat has entered the second of three consecutive weeks of the Triple Crown World Series. The World Series drew a combined 300 youth baseball teams in 2008, but participation dropped to 180 teams this year, Evans Hall said.

Compounding the anticipated drop in tourism this weekend is a second variable - World Series volume fluctuates from week to week with the age group of the teams playing. Some age groups draw more participation than others, Evans Hall said. This weekend coincides with the lightest age group in 2009.

Bob Amin, owner of the Fairfield Inn by Marriot on U.S. Highway 40, said although his summer business is down about 3 percent, some key weekend nights were sold out six months in advance.

"For the last five years or so, our summers have been busier than winters," Amin said.