Fewer families are booking spring break vacations to Colorado resort destinations, as weaker-than-normal ski conditions cause drops in reservations made later in the season. Amid the potential for a lower-revenue spring break tourism season, some Western Slope ski towns are focusing on promoting off-mountain activities for families.

For most resort towns across Colorado’s western mountains, spring break is a strong period for tourism. Travelers from both in and out of state book trips to the mountains in hopes of hitting the slopes before the end of ski season, and businesses organize seasonal events to draw in visitors.

This year’s near historically dry conditions, however, have meant fewer winter bookings to Colorado’s resort destinations — and spring break bookings are seeing the impacts.

“March overall is down, and it’s down strongly. That’s just a result of the overall impact of snow,” said Tom Foley, director of business intelligence for Inntopia, a booking and marketing platform for resorts across the country.

In Steamboat Springs, a popular spring break destination in Colorado for late-season skiing and other outdoor activities, lodging bookings for March are down 10% year over year, according to Laura Soard, senior director of marketing and communications for the Steamboat Springs Chamber. Soard said this winter has been Steamboat’s “biggest anomaly year” for visitation since the pandemic.

“March is one of our busiest months in the ski season because of spring breaks, but we are seeing fewer lodging bookings for the rest of the month,” Soard said. “We are definitely seeing the impacts of a lower snow year with not as many people booking to come out here for their spring break.”

Colorado’s spring break season, though still bringing in bookings, will likely end with lower revenue for mountain destinations compared to previous years, Foley said. Soard added that the considerable decrease in bookings will likely also lead to impacts for the town’s sales tax collections.

Spring break for college and K-12 institutions typically occurs over a one-week period between early March and mid-April, sometimes planned around the Easter holiday. For Colorado, those dates are typically around March 12-31.

For the most part, though, Foley said things are “behaving kind of normally” for spring break tourism to Colorado in terms of heightened bookings during that period, even if those bookings are lower compared to previous years.

“That is the least bad-looking period for Colorado resorts, especially the week of (March) 14th to the 21st. It’s still down, but it is down less than pretty much the rest of the month,” Foley said. 

February bookings for arrival during February through July are down 19.4% for participating destinations across Colorado and Utah, while bookings made in February for arrival in March are down 24.9%, according to data from Inntopia. Arrival for April is down a larger 42.2%, a variance that isn’t entirely unusual for a low-volume month.

While many of the bookings reported by resort destinations during March are made by Coloradans from other parts of the state looking for their “mountain getaway,” bookings are also showing an uptick in early April, when spring break is occurring for most other states this year.

Foley said Colorado destinations are reporting gains in occupancy booked for arrival in the first week of April, particularly from April 4-11, which follows the Easter holiday. On the other hand, resorts are also reporting a drop in bookings for mid-April, which is when spring breaks have been scheduled in the past for those inbound tourist states.

“It’s basically visitation moving on the calendar with the school breaks,” he said. “It looks like a fairly even tradeoff as far as that goes. In other words, the deficit is pretty much offset equally by the gain in early April.”

The booking gains Colorado resorts are seeing for those first few days of April, Foley added, are some of the only gains reported for 2026 so far. During the first few months of Colorado’s ongoing winter season, the state’s lackluster snowfall and warm temperatures have deterred potential visitors away from its mountains and lured them toward states with more promising conditions.

“What we’ve seen is the people who booked a long time ago, they’ll still be coming, because they booked so long ago and have been planning for this vacation. But we don’t expect to see as many last-minute regional bookings as we usually do in the spring,” Soard said.

Resorts have managed to maintain moderately solid rates for March and close to flat rates for the season, which Foley said has fortunately helped to mitigate the impact of lower volume. He added that recent snowfall in Colorado could add to the last-minute bookings made in March, particularly from in-state travelers or those in neighboring states who can easily make the drive.

“We are seeing fewer shorter-term bookings now, as the season wanes, but there are still the snow hounds that are going to see snowfall and jump on it. That is a separate conversation than the spring breakers,” Foley said. “There might be some that’ll hop on a plane, but it’s not going to be the majority.”

In response to lower bookings, businesses have turned to early marketing for their off-mountain activities like mountain biking, hiking, sightseeing and family-friendly activities, which Foley said began over a month ago.

“A lot of visitors are choosing to ski fewer days, so we’re certainly seeing an increased interest in non-ski activities,” Soard said. “Bike rentals, fly fishing … people are asking where they can hike right now, which we wouldn’t normally have yet.”

This increased interest in off-mountain activities has proven to be a benefit to other mountain destinations like Glenwood Springs, which is having a pretty average tourism season thanks to its lower reliance on snow for recreation. Heidi Pankow, the communications director for Visit Glenwood Springs, said low-snow years can even lead to better tourism for Glenwood, since visitors who can’t get in good ski days will instead look for vacation areas with warmer weather and better travel conditions.

“When there isn’t as great of a snow season, we actually do fairly well in Glenwood, as far as day-trippers,” Pankow said, adding that families are often drawn to Glenwood’s hot springs and mountain theme park. “I don’t want to say that we’re booming or anything like that because that’s not the case, but we don’t suffer as much of a decline as the resort communities do because we don’t have a resort.”

Visitors are not only shifting their attention to off-mountain activities, but also toward indoor activities.

“I’m hearing anecdotally from folks who own spas and galleries and indoor activities like virtual reality rooms and things like that, that have actually had a pretty good year,” Foley said. “They’re not necessarily winning, but they’re not down as much as they feared they might be because people are coming to town and doing things besides skiing.”

Businesses in resort towns, for now, are likely looking ahead toward a more stable summer tourism season as an opportunity to make up lost ground, Soard said.

“Summer is actually looking fairly strong,” Foley said. “There’s good bookings anticipated, we’re seeing numbers that are positive, on the occupancy, rate and on the revenue side of things at this early date. And so that’s actually a good sign.”