Now that the ski area’s back on track to open Nov. 30 after a week’s delay, it’s not just ski bums who are all tingly. Business people — from CEOs to housecleaners — are happy, too.

With snow comes running ski lifts. With lifts come tourists. With tourists come business.
“We’re happy to see snow,” said Scott McQuade, CEO of the Telluride Tourism Board. “It was getting a little worrisome out there.”

The hard data from the Telluride Tourism Board says that the difference in average hotel occupancy from the off-season to the ski season is huge, a 30 percent difference between off-season months and ski season months.

A couple of local housecleaners — who called themselves simply Esperanza and Gaviota — said that the tourists were seeing the weather and turning around. “The hotels were empty,” Esperanza says.

With the ski resort quiet these past few days, employees at Paragon on main street estimated that business was down perhaps 30 percent from a normal opening Thanksgiving weekend.

“Second homeowners, they’re gonna come here anyway for Thanksgiving,” said Paragon’s Travis Young, “but people weren’t buying skis and stuff. They were buying bike tubes.”

Likewise, the line at the Coffee Cowboy lately has been shorter than it might otherwise, said Lisa Knight, who works there.

“Obviously town is slow be because the mountain’s still not open,” said Knight. “It just seems really quiet.”

This Friday’s surprise snowstorm upped sales of things like hats, gloves, and boots, said Telluride Sports main street manager Nicole Nugent (no relation to Ted).
Many wonder if the good times are here to stay.

Cheryl Kimleigh is the owner of The Art of Being, a store on main street filled with “local artists and irresistible fair trade items,” as she puts it. She was worried when the snow didn’t come.

“I’m still worrying,” she said. “It’s hard enough with the off season what it is. If we have a lean season snow-wise it’s gonna be a lean financial year as well.”
Kimleigh did Zen meditation to calm herself during snowless days.
“Without the tourists there’s only a few businesses that can survive with just local shoppers,” she said.

A while back, a Tibetan Monk and an Indian Rishi came in to give her store good energy, which was great, but she kind of wishes she’d have thought to have them say one more prayer: to the gods of snow.

Speaking of prayer: even the churches are grateful for the new snow.
“Visitors tend to come when there is snow,” said Chuck Parry, pastor at the Telluride Christian Fellowship. His regular parishioners are there all the time, but with snow and a crowded ski slope, there’re more souls in town to save.