Late Easter brings decent news for lodging reservations in Vail

This story has been corrected to reflect Vail lodging’s performance versus the industry aggregate.

Easter’s arrival varies from year to year; it’s the first Sunday following the first full moon following the spring equinox. Easter is about as late as it can be this year.

A late Easter can be tough news in the ski resort business, since people tend to start picking up golf clubs and garden tools. That’s kind of the case in Vail.

At the Four Seasons Resort and Residences in Vail, director of sales and marketing Jonathan Reap said the Easter Weekend is “pretty quiet,” especially since Vail Mountain is closing Sunday.

Beyond Vail’s Closing Day, the Four Seasons is closing for “about a month” starting next week.

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On the other hand, Reap said the week before Easter, celebrated as Holy Week among Christians, has been fairly busy. That week is celebrated as “Semana Santa” in Mexico and Latin America, and tends to draw visitors from that part of the world.

Reap said the Four Seasons has several residence owners from Mexico, and has had many hotel guests from that country and other Latin American countries.

But Mark Herron, longtime Vail Valley lodging executive and consultant, said the late holiday has left the resort areas pretty quiet. The late holiday, declining consumer confidence and volatile financial markets have all had an impact, Herron said.

Town of Vail economic development director Mia Vlaar offered a different view.

Vlaar closely tracks lodging booking data, and said “virtually every day” from March 23 through the end of Vail Mountain’s season was tracking ahead of 2024 data versus the rest of the resort industry. But, while April’s reservations were up 26% over 2024, March’s numbers declined 3% over the previous year.

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Vlaar said April has been “surprisingly good.” And, she added, she’s heard a lot of people speaking Spanish in the resort areas, something one notices around the Easter season.

Vail has long been a key market for the Mexican market, Vlaar noted. That’s a key difference from much of the rest of the resort market, which has seen steep declines in visitation from Canada. In addition to the declines in Canadian visitation, Inntopia’s Destimetrics, which measures lodging data for the resort industry, is also monitoring other international visitation, including from Mexico and Europe.

But Vlaar said that anecdotally, Sylvia Rivera the town of Vail’s representative in Mexico City, is reporting that the town’s longtime relationship with the country remains strong. Mexican visitors have long seen Vail as “safe, special and welcoming,” Vlaar said. That continues, even as international headlines make waves elsewhere.

Looking ahead, summer bookings are running about 1% ahead of 2024, with average daily rates up a similar amount.

“We’re in good shape,” Vlaar said. “We tend to weather the storms a little better than most.”