Cell phone data indicates 11% visitor increase at Park City Mountain for the 21/22 ski season

The line for the Town Lift on Sunday, March 6. Photo: Jon Karlas

PARK CITY, Utah — Visitation at Park City Mountain reached a five year peak for the 2021/22 season when compared to the last five years of data provided by Placer.ai, a data analytics firm that uses mobile-device location information to measure foot traffic at specific locations.

With lots of local discourse and reader requests around just how busy last ski season was, TownLift embarked on the task of gathering specific visitation numbers from both Park City Mountain & Deer Valley Resort. With local resort owners having a policy of not reporting resort-specific visitation data, TownLift turned to Placer.ai to gather external data on visitation. Placer.ai does this by collecting mobile device geolocation and proximity data from devices that are enabled to share that information without collecting personally identifiable data.

Anecdotally, anyone who lives in Park City felt the pressure from increased traffic this past winter. While some traffic study data was released by Park City Municipal, as well as hotel booking data from the Park City Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, all indicating strong year over year growth, no specific data up to this point has been released in regards to actual visitation at Park City Mountain or Deer Valley Resort. The two resorts are the biggest, and most consistent drivers, of visitation during the winter months.

Resort Specific Visitation Data

Within the Placer.ai reporting system, TownLift was able to geofence the resort’s boundary to gather the following visitation trends for both PCMR and Deer Valley. This will ensure that the location data gathered is from users within the resorts boundaries to be included in the report. To note some residential areas are included in this geofence perimeter.

While numbers of visitors are an approximation, the firm’s algorithm is incredibly accurate in detecting visitation trends on a year-over-year increase/decrease.

Park City Mountain 5 year visitation trend

Deer Valley Resort 5 year visitation trend

The charts above compiled with Placer.ai visitor data indicate that Park City Mountain saw an 11% increase in year over year visitation for the 21/22 seasons where Deer Valley, who limits the number of tickets sold, saw a decrease in year over year visitors of 2.5% .

In late April this year Vail Resorts told investors that across all their resorts visitation was up 12.5% for the 21/22 season.

Last week, the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) said that skier visits nationwide broke an all-time record last winter with over 61 million, with the Rocky Mountain region seeing the most guests.

Traffic data published by Park City Municipal earlier this year showed winter traffic times at the resort’s base unlike any other season:

The Park City Daily Occupancy Report released on December 31, 2021 by the Park City Chamber of Commerce further indicated a strong increase in year over year advanced hotel bookings.

On May 10th, 2022 Park City Mountain announced a change in leadership. Current COO Mike Goar is set to depart on May 30 for Andermatt-Sedrun in Switzerland, which was acquired by Vail Resorts earlier this year. Deirdra Walsh, who has served as the VP and general manager of Northstar Ski Resort in North Lake Tahoe, is set to replace Goar at Park City Mountain.

During a mid-season update with the Park City Council in February, Goar said the resort hadn’t set any visitation records up to that point.

“I assure you the 47% increase in season pass sales does not equate to an increase in day visitors. It can, it can, on occasion. But as I’ve stated, that’s not what we’ve seen here in Park City,” he told the council on Feb. 17.

City councilors were very critical during the meeting. Council member Ryan Dickey, who described himself as “kind of a data guy,” echoed the sentiments of the others by saying “it just kind of doesn’t add up.”

Ski Utah President and CEO Nathan Rafferty told TownLift that Utah-specific skier visit data for the 2021-22 season will be released later this year.

Correction: A previous version of this article included individual numbers. Although it was stated that the algorithm’s individual statistics were not exact, we felt it was best to remove them and included solely percentages.