Explaining the skiers surge in Park City

Every time I went skiing this winter, I was struck by the difficulties I had in parking my car. I’m not talking about much longer ski lines, a by-product of Covid-19’s rules of distanciation, but about the sheer number of skier’s cars in the ski area parking lots. 

I first thought that it was in direct correlation with the intense cabin fever suffered by every American, and skiing being an obvious and wholesome way to enjoy the outdoors, at least for those fortunate enough to afford it. 

This might have more than offset the reluctance of some destination traveler to come over during the pandemic. 

Then, yesterday, as I was listening to an NPR piece lamenting the shutdown of the Canadian-US border, it finally downed on me that the extra crowds were probably the result of all these US residents who couldn’t travel to Canada to ski because of the border closure between the two countries. 

So, I went into my files, did some research and found out that while both Canada and the United States lost both their international visitors that season (roughly 14 and 3.3 million respectively), the US might have potentially regained most of its citizens skiers that would have skied to Canada.

In Canada, these US visitors represent 56% of its international clientele, that accounts for about 7.8 million skier-days. 

So if you subtract 3.3 million international skiers that didn’t come to the US this winter, you end up with a net gain of 4.5 million skier-days for the United States, that is a 9% increase overall and probably a 10 to 12% increase for popular destinations like Park City with easy air access. 

Let’s stay tuned for the final May tally!