Utah's ski industry had a banner year, helped by record snowfall this winter and Delta Air Lines' addition of 29 new non-stop service flights last year, which brought more skiers to the state's 13 major resorts.

That, and a dearth of snow in the northeast states including Vermont and New Hampshire, helped Utah's ski resorts set new records in the number of skier days or lift tickets sold for the 2005-2006 winter season. For the second year in a row, Utah ski resorts saw more than 600 inches of snowfall.

In what Utah ski industry marketers call the busiest-ever season in Utah's skiing history, the 13 resorts reported 4.05 million lift tickets sold for the 2005-2006 winter season ending May 29, up 3.8 percent over last year's record of 3.9 million. Except for Snowbird, which will remain open at least until May 29, all the other resorts are closed.

Utah resorts have experienced a 29 percent jump in lift tickets sold during the past three years while nationwide, the ski industry has stagnated at about 57 million skier visits annually in the same period.

"We are thrilled to have reached this significant milestone of 4 million skier days," said Ski Utah President Nathan Rafferty. "Delta Air Lines has made it even more convenient for skiers to get to Utah by providing non-stop service starting this year when it closed its Dallas hub and moved its operations to Salt Lake International." The airport served more than 22.2 million passengers last year.

"We also benefited from increased numbers of skiers from the northeast because that area didn't have a great snow year. People from Boston and New York were coming to Utah because there wasn't much snow in Vermont, New Hampshire and other parts of the northeast," said Hillary Reiter, director of communications for Ski Utah.

Tourism is a $5.45 billion industry in Utah that attracted more than 18.2 million visitors in 2005, an increase of 4 percent from the previous year, according to an Associated Press report Tuesday.

But Utah's domestic travel market share has declined from .86 percent to .75 percent in the past decade, even following the 2002 Winter Olympics.

State leaders are determined to regain that market share and take in a bigger slice of the more than $550 billion that tourists spend in the U.S. each year, the AP report said.

Luring more skiers to the state is crucial to their efforts. Skiers spend about 176 percent more per trip, excluding travel costs, than the average Utah tourist, the AP report said, citing statistics from the Utah Office of Tourism.

In 2005, the Legislature appropriated about $10 million to market the state this year, an increase of about 1,000 percent from previous years, the AP report said. Some of that money was spent on a cooperative marketing program between Salt Lake City International Airport and Utah ski areas to tout a tourist's ability to fly into Utah and be on a ski slope the same morning, the report said.

Utah's ski resorts also benefited from a growing number of international visitors -- which account for about 3 percent of total visitation -- because of the U.S. dollar's weakness against other currencies, including the Euro. "We're getting a lot of visitors from the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and Germany," Rafferty said. "And these visitors tend to stay longer and spend more money."

To tap that out-of-state demographic, Ski Utah launched an aggressive industry marketing campaign to spotlight competitive hotel and motel rates offered statewide, Rafferty said.

At a presentation to the Utah Office of Tourism Tuesday, Ski Utah officials said they hope to receive $250,000 in matching grants from the state Legislature to fund a direct marketing campaign for the 2006-2007 winter season. Ski Utah received $94,247 for tourism promotion last year.

"Ski Utah is working with the state tourism office to create media opportunities to promote winter tourism," Rafferty said. "We're hitting hard on branding the state. The resorts each do their own individual advertising. But our job at Ski Utah is to drive home the message that Utah has the greatest snow on earth and unrivaled access to its resorts."

The Utah Board of Tourism Development is expected to approve another $1 million in other cooperative marketing applications at its meeting today.

Sundance by the numbers

Sundance saw the number of day passes sold rise to 40,588 this year, up from 40,321 last year, due mainly to a competitively-priced ski pass program targeted at students from Brigham Young University and Utah Valley State College, said Lucy Ridolphi, the resort's marketing and public relations manager. The number of season passes sold jumped to 94,000 this year, up from 91,000 last year.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D6.