The Stash: Sochi Effect – does mainstream coverage drive niche bookings?

Every four years the ski industry once again enters prime time as skiers and snowboarders take the stage at the Olympic games. Sochi played host to a long list of snow-sliding events in February of 2014, but did this mainstream coverage drive lodging bookings at mountain resorts? Take a gander.

The Goods
To find our answer we looked at over 250,000 lodging reservations from 16 different mountain resorts made during the 2012/13, 2013/14 (the Olympic year, in orange below), and 2014/15 winter seasons. The games spanned nearly the entire month of February, so aside from finding average monthly booking volumes in that month, we also found these monthly averages for the two months before and after.

The trends between these three years looked identical for four of the five months we analyzed. In February, however, the year before and after both dropped 21% while the Olympic year only saw a 2% decline in bookings. March declined slightly but stayed above the other years before dropping sharply in April.

What This Means
There was no clear spike in bookings, but what the games seem to do is keep bookings high at a time when they should have dropped sharply. The season eventually catches up but the difference is impressive during (and immediately after) the games.

A question that arises, however, is when these skiers actually came. Did they make one last trip that season or had their thoughts already turned to next? We’ll cover that in a few weeks.

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