TELLURIDE — A weak economy has ski resorts slashing prices, dusting off package deals that haven’t been available for years, offering discounts to cover the cost of airline baggage fees — anything to get skiers to the mountain.
There’s one place that is bucking the trend: Lumiere.
The luxury boutique hotel near Telluride faces the daunting task of opening its doors during a downswing in the economy but has decided to do it without offering any cut-rate deals.
“We’d be naive to say that we’re not paying attention to economy,” said Lumiere president Matthew Nuss. “It’s a concern, but it’s not something that’s waving a red flag at us right now.
“We’ve had to come off our prices a little bit but not to the point that we’re not a good value for the service we’re providing.”
Set to open Thanksgiving week, Lumiere is in a unique position. The 30-room hotel is on one of the last remaining pieces of good ski-in, ski-out real estate in Mountain Village and will be one of the few high-end serviced hotels in the Telluride area.
And because of Telluride’s mostly affluent clientele, Lumiere is opening in an area that won’t be hit nearly as hard by the weak economy as other ski areas.
It’s still a difficult time to open a hotel, though.
The owners of Lumiere are mapping out their marketing plan, tracking how people book into Telluride and making sure potential guests understand that breakfast, ski valet and wireless Internet service — usually add-ons at other hotels — are included in the price.
They’re also working with a search-engine-optimization partner to make sure their hotel gets top listings on all the Web’s major search engines.
“There really aren’t a lot of high-end serviced hotels in Telluride, and we saw an opening for our concept to really fill a void in the market that we feel is going to be a profitable one,” Nuss said. “But we do have to be a little more active when it comes to marketing than if the economy were a little more sounder.”
