Whitefish Mountain Resort Pass Sales Hold Steady, but Revenue Slips
Wildfire smoke and July’s airport runway closure dampened summer visitation, while a shift in who bought passes cut revenue; winter lodging bookings trail last year by 16%
By Maggie Dresser
Whitefish Mountain Resort (WMR) sold roughly 16,500 season passes by its Sept. 30 early-bird deadline, about the same as last year, after a summer of wildfire smoke, tree thinning and uneven visitation patterns that left the resort with flat summer revenue.
Matt Gebo, the resort’s sales and marketing director, told the Whitefish Tourism Town Hall audience last week that June was unusually busy and staff thought it could be the biggest summer in a decade. Business dropped off in July, when the airport runway closed during weekdays for its rehabilitation work, and visitation fell further in August, when thick smoke from an active Pacific Northwest wildfire season settled over Big Mountain.
“Nobody wants to go mountain biking or hiking when they can’t breathe very well,” Gebo said.
Scenic chairlift rides were down about 2% from last year, while the resort lost 30% of expected visits during the 21 days that thick smoke choked Big Mountain, he said.
“The smoke played a really negative role in August,” Gebo said. “Both our Summit House dining and retail took a pretty big hit because of that.”
The Big Mountain Fuels Reduction project, a collaboration with local stakeholder group Firesafe Flathead that launched this year to reduce wildfire risk, also affected operations. Trails were rerouted onto exposed terrain, which did not improve the experience for users. Combined with low huckleberry yields, Gebo said, the project contributed to a drop in the late-summer and early-fall visitation the resort usually sees from locals.
Despite those hurdles, Gebo described the summer as flat overall, and he said the trend is continuing into winter: pass sales by the Sept. 30 deadline were similar to last season’s.
The mix of buyers changed this year, however. Fewer adults ages 19 to 64 bought passes for the 2026-2027 season, while more juniors ages 7 to 12 and more super seniors age 70 and up did. The shift in demographics led to a drop in revenue despite similar volume.
Gebo said lodging reservations trail last year’s by about 16%, a gap he attributed to the 2025-2026 season’s low snowpack and to inflation affecting travel behavior.
“Coming off a tough winter, snowfall certainly has an impact,” Gebo said. “Economics have an impact. The price of flights right now are surely having an impact. So, we’re trying to make some adjustments to length of stay, the markets that we’re trying to attract to the resort for the wintertime and a few other things to hopefully combat some of that.”
Snowfall usually offsets slow pre-season bookings, Gebo said, but a warm, dry winter forecast tied to an unusually powerful El Niño has dampened expectations.
“The Super El Niño is the elephant in the room for the ski industry up in this part of the country,” Gebo said.
He reminded the audience, however, that during the most recent El Niño year during the 2015-2016 season, the resort received 311 inches of snow at the summit snow stake.
Regardless of snowfall, Gebo said, the terrain will be better this winter after crews thinned a significant volume of trees on the front side as part of the Big Mountain Fuels Reduction Project. The work opened two new tree runs, Bad Medicine and Big Twig. Bad Medicine descends from skier’s right of Toni Matt, just below Good Medicine. Big Twig is skier’s left of Toni Matt and descends toward the Chair 4 lift line.
Resort hand crews also thinned 125 acres of vegetation on the front side, including North Bowl Face, Schmidt’s Chute, Elkweed, Movieland from Russ’s Street to the Danny On Memorial Trail, about half of The Back 9, and a small area between Langley and Inspiration.
“There are some really nice lines that got cleaned up and it definitely will improve the skiing experience on the front face,” Gebo said.
