Mountain luxury hotels: the beginning of the end?

Today, I read that the Ritz-Carlton in Bachelor Gulch, near Beaver Creek in Colorado, is in foreclosure. At $61 million, it's believed to be the largest foreclosure in Eagle County's history.

To make things worse for that Colorado county, the Ritz-Carlton's $443,286.24 property tax for 2010 hasn't been paid. So-called luxury hotels abound in the Rocky Mountain West. Park City counts three of them: St. Regis, Montage and Waldorf-Astoria.

Can these upscale palaces survive for long? Probably not; their business model won't sustain discounted rate and an 85% occupancy over just four months of the year for very . Further, the über-rich ranks have thinned out and the spendthrift paradigm has vaporized from the time these behemoths were planned in 2005 when unbridled growth was the call of the day. My sense is that our mountain real estate is still lagging in relation to the rest of the country and we might still be two or three years away from a real estate bottom in Park City...