“The words La Nina, and last year being a very strong snow year helped to push Season’s Pass sales and 6Pak sales,” he said. The “snow” visits were in the Top 5 of the Resort’s history, Curtain said.
Some of that was attributed to all the extra media coverage, and some of it was word of mouth, he said.
“We got front page of the Globe and Mail, we were on the national news with Peter Mansbridge. It did spread internationally, but a lot of the mainstream (media) covered us more than anything.
“National media attention would have been seen by 20 million eyes in Canada,” he said. A national media tracking company estimated the exposure gave the Resort the advertising equivalent of $700,000 just from Christmas alone.
And in a post-Olympic year, virtually none of that attention had to do with the successful 2010 Winter Olympics staged at Whistler and Vancouver.
The Resort saw the biggest continuous snowfall over the Christmas holiday, and their records were often lumped in with international coverage of people stuck at Kennedy International Airport in New York – also because of heavy snowfall, Curtain said.
A lot of people came up just to look at all the snow, he added. “On top of the holiday rush of people coming up here, we had people coming up just to see how much snow fell.”
Although it was a big snow year, there were a lot of big powder days – not a lot of so-called “bluebird” days, or clear skies, that draw the fair-weather skiers and boarders.
“We saw moderate growth in night skiing, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing,” Curtain said.
While they saw solid numbers in local visitors, the number of international visitors dropped off.