Village hotel occupancy breaks records again
Ruidoso hotels and motels are surfing the record-breaking crest of a rising wave of visitors, and they’d probably be worried about how long it will last if they weren’t so busy changing the sheets and hanging up the “no vacancy” sign.
“Last year we burst the doors off,” recalled village tourism director Gina Kelley, “and I thought, ‘This is awesome, but what are we gonna do to beat this?’ And then we did beat it. By a lot.”
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, Kelley said innkeepers recorded nearly $29.5 million in revenues and poured $1.47 million of it into village coffers as lodging tax receipts, an increase of 9.4 percent over the previous year.
“I have records back to 2004, and this is the highest it’s ever been,” said Kelley in an interview Tuesday. “I’m hearing that the July numbers are off the charts.”
Lodge owners echo Kelley’s enthusiasm.
“We’ve had a great year so far, and the summer is just incredible,” said general manager Steve Tally of MCM Elegante Lodge and Suites. “We’ve surpassed last year in occupancy and revenue for July.”
“Things are really good,” agreed Alan Riches, who became owner last October of Story Book Cabins in the Upper Canyon and also chairs the village Lodger’s Tax Committee.
“A lot of the Upper Canyon lodges keep up with each other on email, and who’s got an opening,” he added. “Very rarely is there more than one or two cabins available. For this Thursday through Saturday, we’re turning people away and I don’t know anybody else who has an opening either.”
Kelley noted that her figures only include operators within village limits. They don’t include the Inn of the Mountain Gods or visitors who come up to occupy their second homes or rent them out.
Although she didn’t claim sole credit for the incoming tide of tourism washing up Sudderth Drive as the summer season peaks, Kelley did describe a media marketing campaign that grows broader and more diverse with every season.
The customer profile for Ruidoso visitors has long been upper middle income people from West Texas, aged 45 to 64, Kelley said, and these people are still coming in large numbers. But they’re being joined by growing throngs of tourists from Dallas to the east and Phoenix to the west.
“The Roswell to Phoenix flight is catching hold,” Kelley said. “I was worried at first, but now it’s looking good. It’s carrying 80 percent loads. We think there’s a lot of growth there.”
Another promising source of fresh growth is Albuquerque, she said. “We see Albuquerque as just surging. It’s going up and up and up.”
Kelley’s media campaigns go well beyond the traditional print, broadcast and billboard channels, all of which still work but aren’t enough by themselves. One new technique is “e-blasts,” hundreds of thousands of illustrated promotional blurbs targeted to individual email accounts.
“Every one of them produces a huge bump in Facebook traffic, website traffic and e-newsletter signups,” she said.
The responses come back coded by location, “so we know where they are,” she said.
Another effective new-media channel is Weather Bug, a popular ad-supported weather app for portable devices whose customers in Ruidoso’s target markets automatically see a promo featuring the cool mountain vistas of Lincoln County whenever the mercury hits 95 degrees in Texas or triple digits in Phoenix.
“We’re always trying to find ways to get in front of people,” Kelley said. “It’s really an exciting time.”
Tally doesn’t really know what’s driving travelers into the Elegante's welcoming arms, but he hopes it continues.
“I don’t know if it’s low gas prices or just extremely hot this year,” he said, “but they’re flocking to the mountains and we’re glad.”
Ditto for Riches at Story Book Cabins.
“When we tell people we’re full they ask us what’s going on up there,” he said. “Cool weather. Horse racing. That’s what’s going on up here.”