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Show Resort Records Best Week During Season Last week's busy Washington's Wash-ington's Birthday holiday represented the Park City Resort's best financial week during what has been an extremely ex-tremely poor winter season. Last Thursday, for the first time this season, ticket sales at the Resort exceeded those of a corresponding day last year. The Resort's Assistant Marketing Director, Laura Thomas, said that there were two such record days during the week. She added, however, that overall, business busi-ness for the week was down 17 percent from last year's Washington's Birthday holiday. holi-day. The holiday is traditionally one of the businest weeks at any ski resort. Ms. Thomas said that recent snowfalls have steadily stead-ily increased the number of skiers on the mountain on any given day. She explained the first week of February saw ticket sales off 13 percent over last year and the week before they were down 29 percent, and the week before that, 43 percent. More than 3,600 guests were staying in Park City last week and at Prospector Square along, 1,800 are expected to remain throughout through-out this week. Main Street and Holiday Village retail shops reported substantial business during the holiday with many experiencing their best days this season. Restaurants throughout the city were jammed with dinner guests and long waits for tables were customary. Some restaurants even reported re-ported running out of many menu items due to the heavy volume. With February over half spent there still are many exciting events planned for March. During mid month, Park City Resort and Deer Valley will host the NCAA collegiate alpine and nordic skiing finals and on March 9, 10 and 11 United States Ski Team Celebrity Invitational will be held here. Since Easter Sunday, traditionally tra-ditionally the last big ski weekend of the season, falls late in April this year, business can be expected to continue at a brisk pace throughout the next two and a half months, providing the weather cooperates. Unseasonably warm temperatures tem-peratures earlier this week have somewhat hampered ski conditions at Park City and Park West but the weather holds a possibility of snow by the weekend. One thing is clear, if losses sustained in December and January are to be recovered, it will have to be done in March and April because February draws swiftly to a close and business overall still lags behind last year's figures. |