Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — With two weekends remaining in the 2011-12 ski season, Steamboat Springs lodging properties expect occupancy of about 25 percent Saturday.

Downtown hotels and motels should be the busiest this weekend, with a forecast occupancy of about 42 percent, according to the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association’s weekly lodging barometer. The barometer, which serves as a gauge of overnight visitors to help local businesses determine staffing levels during the high-traffic winter and summer seasons, expects about 3,900 guests to stay in Steamboat lodging properties Saturday night. About 3,200 guests were forecast to spend the night in Steamboat on the corresponding Saturday in April 2011.

Mountain-area hotels are expected to have the lowest overall occupancy rate this weekend at 22 percent. Mountain-area condos will be about 25 percent full, and nightly lodging accommodations in other areas of the city will be about 30 percent full, according to the Chamber.

This Easter weekend ushers in the final week of the ski season at Steamboat Ski Area. Missed the Boat plays a free concert at 2 p.m. Saturday in Gondola Square followed by Keller Williams at 3 p.m., and an Easter sunrise service starts at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, also in Gondola Square.

The ski area’s Springalicious closing weekend festivities still were scheduled as of late this week, including the annual Cardboard Classic on April 14 and the Splashdown Pond Skim on April 15. Ski area officials said they plan to truck in snow from the city’s rodeo grounds downtown to allow the Springalicious on-mountain festivities to take place. Toots and the Maytals and JJ Grey & Mofro will play free concerts April 15 in Gondola Square.

The Chamber doesn’t produce a lodging barometer for closing weekend, so occupancy levels for the final two days of the season aren’t known.