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Steamboat Springs — The Steamboat Springs resort community is celebrating a modest powder boost this holiday weekend with more than 3,500 visitors in town to ski the leftovers of a series of storms that gave Steamboat Ski Area its best Opening Day conditions in a decade.

But the question on the minds of resort leaders is, “How far can the snow message carry us in uncertain economic times?”

Rob Perlman, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp., was in an ebullient mood Wednesday as he watched happy skiers coming off the mountain. The Thanksgiving holiday doesn’t represent a pivotal weekend on the winter resort calendar, but visitation was expected to see an increase of about 1,100 people tonight from the corresponding Saturday in 2009.

“With every storm that came through this month, we saw our Web traffic spike,” Perlman said. “We have a good start and we want to build on that every month and continue through the remaining season. One of our strategies is to reach as many people as we can before Christmas and get them thinking about the good snow conditions through the season.

“Before we opened, we saw how the jet stream had started to flow and the early effects of La Niña and launched major e-mail campaigns as early as we could.”

Steamboat Resorts principal Bob Milne said his marketing staff launched an e-mail blitz intended to lure skiers from drive-to markets early this season and was surprised with the results.

“It’s amazing how much response you get,” Milne said. “We had people calling in saying, ‘Oh yeah, we saw you got a lot of snow,’ and then book a vacation for January.”

Ski industry ‘resilient’

Milne, whose company manages properties in Vail, Beaver Creek and Breckenridge, as well as in Steamboat, said he already feels better about resort business beyond the New Year than he did last year at this time.

“We aren’t where we want to be, but we already have a good base in January, February and March, and in Steamboat, March is 24 percent ahead of where we were last year on this date,” Milne said.

He said the return of ski clubs this winter, beginning with the Crescent Ski Club — 250 strong from North Carolina and South Carolina on Dec. 4 — will boost Steamboat’s resort business throughout winter.

Perlman said he knows that overcoming peoples’ urge to hold onto their cash is a challenge.

“There are a lot of discouraging signs out there,” Perlman said. “But the ski industry is more resilient than other destinations. We’re very important in peoples’ lives. They still want to go to a special place for vacation.”

One of the challenges this year comes from an 11 percent reduction in inbound airline seats in the Fly Steamboat program.

The resort community uses funds from Ski Corp., the broader business community and a lodging tax to underwrite direct flights to Yampa Valley Regional Airport from Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Min­­neapolis and Newark.

The cuts came in the form of eliminating a direct flight from Salt Lake City, which provided an easy connection from West Coast cities, and the use of smaller aircraft on some routes.

Perlman acknowledged that simply working for higher load factors on the smaller aircraft won’t overcome the reduction in seats.

“We’ve learned there’s a pretty strong correlation between the number of seats and the number of visitors,” he said.

Routt County Finance Dir­ector Dan Strnad said earlier this month that he had revised the county’s projected 2011 sales tax revenues downward based on the reduced number of airline seats and the lower landing fees that will be paid by the airlines as a result of the smaller aircraft.

Deals to seal deals

The National Ski Areas Assoc­­iation’s report in spring on the winter of 2009-10 — the second best season for ski areas across the country — appears to support Perlman’s theory. Nationally, the ski industry recorded 59.7 million visits in spite of the economy and a 14 percent decrease overall in snowfall. Steamboat Ski Area did not report skier visits.

Milne said his staff noticed that some of their vacation condominium owners are planning driving trips to Steamboat this winter and reasoned that it might be time to reach out to people trying to economize by car-pooling to Steamboat.

Depending upon length of stay, Steamboat Resorts is offering gas coupons with values from $50 to $100. It’s just a little nudge to push skiers over the edge, Milne said.

Similarly, Ski Corp. is offering Champagne Powder packages that pair 20 percent off lodging and lift tickets with two glasses of champagne to seal the deal.

Fast out of the gate

Steamboat already is more than a third of the way to last year’s snowfall total of 250 inches (which was about 70 inches below average), with 91 inches of snow falling from late October to today.

Last winter’s mediocre snow total did not help Steamboat, Perlman said, but a commitment to guest service will help the resort rebound this year.

Although ski areas across the country were down 14 percent in snowfall in 2009-10, the Rocky Mountains were down 20 percent (the Midwest was down 31 percent) and Steamboat had a competitive snow disadvantage compared to destination ski areas in the southern Colorado Rockies.

“Steamboat’s guests gave the resort high marks for guest services last winter at a time when people in the front lines of the tourism business were being asked to do more with less,” Perl­­man said.

“We’re so proud of our scores last year, and it’s really a credit to the whole town,” he said.

One of the consequences of the rocky unemployment climate in Northwest Colorado this season is that Ski Corp. can recruit and hire highly motivated people who aspire to providing above-average guest services, he added, and that leads to higher guest loyalty and intent to return.