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Businesses break records to cap off 2011

From dog sledding, to après, to skiing, Whistler businesses came out tops
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Skating success The new outdoor ice rink was put to good use in its first few weeks of operations — it was among many Whistler businesses seeing high, if not record-breaking, business levels in December.

Whistler capped off 2011 with holiday business numbers that could shake up the record books, making this winter a season to remember.

At Black's Pub, at the base of the mountains, an admittedly tired but pleased Lawrence Black reported he had the busiest December ever in his 26 years operating in Whistler — up 13 per cent over December 2004, his busiest 'til now.

Over at Canadian Snowmobile Adventures, general manager Craig Beattie, confirmed it was a record-breaking December too with New Year's Eve day "our biggest day ever" in the company's 17 year history.

Whistler Blackcomb, while keeping its numbers close to its chest, had a Christmas season on par with some of its busiest on the books.

Stuart Rempel, WB's senior vice president of marketing and sales, said there were a number of factors at play last month, and the stars aligned for a successful Christmas period.

While the resort partners had done a lot of work laying the groundwork in the summer and fall with early booking offers, the holidays were capped off by Mother Nature, blessing Whistler with its snowy bounty while leaving other North American resorts desperate for more. Colorado, Utah and California were, and still are, unseasonably warm and dry.

"The big thing was the metre of snow that we had in the week from Christmas through last week... and we've got a base of over (195) centimetres at the moment," Rempel explained. "The fact is that we have a snow advantage over most of North America .... So we had a lot of people hunting for snow."

That jives with what Black noticed in his restaurant.

"I saw a lot of American dollars coming through," he said.

Out in the field, Beattie, try as he might to gauge his visitors on the snowmobile and dog sledding tours, couldn't pinpoint if the guests were coming from any particular place over another.

"We had some Aussies," he said. "We had some Germans. We had people from Ontario, people from Washington, from California, Texas... and I still saw a ton of people from Vancouver."

The dog sledding operations were sold out from Dec. 22-30, barring the odd cancellation or two. The fondue dinner on New Year's Eve was sold out. And the snowmobiling operations were flat out.

"All in all for the numbers we ran — more than excited," said Beattie, of beating his targets.

According to Rempel, however, based on WB's customer surveys, there was a rebound in the destination markets due, in no small part, to the efforts early on by the resort partners.

Europeans, Brits and Aussies were all in Whistler over the holidays.

"We had really strong success in the destination markets in our early booking offers that we did in collaboration between ourselves, Tourism Whistler, the major hotels and even some of the airlines like Air Canada and WestJet," said Rempel.

"We have such a good relationship with, for example, Air Canada in the U.K. and Australia, that they aligned their offers (seat sales) in consultation with us (the resort partners)."

The Fairmont Chateau Whistler was one of those resort partners.

Managing Director Norm Mastalir said those early offers worked. He saw guests from the U.K., Australia and Germany in the hotel, which was sold out or close to sold out five nights over the holidays.

"Our occupancy was up dramatically over last year," he said, of the 33 per cent lift in December's occupancy.

Still, unlike Black's and CSA, it didn't break any records.

"It's better than we've seen for the last several years but it certainly is not record-breaking... especially because rates have not rebounded to anywhere near what it was earlier in the decade," said Mastalir.

Tourism Whistler's Breton Murphy, senior manager of communications, reiterated that guests are looking for value. But that doesn't mean deep discounts; it means getting good bang for your buck, he said.

When guests go home, Murphy said, we want them to think: "That was worth every penny."

Things like the municipality's new outdoor ice rink are helping that so-called "value equation" that Whistler has long tried to capture.

Under the large disco ball at Whistler Olympic Plaza, families, locals, guests and even some newlyweds, made the most of the new ice amenity both under the starry night and in the crisp daytime.

The municipality rented 460 pairs of skates per day on average over the holiday season and at $5 a pop that's $4,300 in revenue every day.

"We're very, very excited about the popularity of the skating," said the municipality's communications manager Michele Comeau.

Much of the time, she added, the facility was operating at capacity with 70 to 80 people on the ice.

While Tourism Whistler was cautious in its early reporting — the official numbers are not in yet —Murphy confirmed the message from the people on the ground.

"2011 appears to be one of our busier Decembers," he said.

Even better yet are the numbers on the books for 2012.

The Fairmont's January and February pace, for example, is very strong, significantly ahead of last year with large corporate meetings and associations coming to stay.

Ten nights this month are shaping up to be sold out.

The good news that capped off 2011 looks set to continue into 2012 and all indications are for a strong season ahead. Whistler's snow base blows its North American competitors out of the water.

And so the stage is set for a healthy season.

Said Rempel: "I think the snow advantage will start to pay dividends now for people making their plans going forward as well because there's a lot of people that wait until post-Christmas to plan their President's Week, to plan their Spring Break in March, to plan their Easter."