Even with high gas prices, Tooele County motel managers say this summer has been one of their best in recent years.

Carol Gibson, manager of the 64-room Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites, said high gas prices haven’t slowed down summer travel like one might expect.

“Gas may have affected travelers a little bit, but we’ve actually received more vacationers and people traveling through this summer compared to summer last year,” she said. “We haven’t been slowing down at all as far as tourists go. In fact, we’ll probably still be busy after summer is over because the events at Miller Motorsports Park go into October.”

Gibson said Miller Motorsports Park has indeed been the major draw for her motel this summer. She said race fans often stay Wednesday through Sunday during the week when a big event is in town.

“Most of the guests we’ve been getting have been for the racetrack, but we’ve also taken in some workers who come out for the Wal-Mart Distribution Center,” Gibson said. “Most recently we also had a big group of people come for an outdoor retailers business expo in Salt Lake, and they stayed out here because most of the Salt Lake motels were already filled up.”

Ginger Martin, manager of the 41-room Oquirrh Motor Inn in Lake Point, said her motel had also seen overflow business from people who need to attend conferences or other business related gatherings in Salt Lake City.

“We’ve had a lot of people stay for different conferences and expos, but the main one we filled up with was the outdoor retailers expo,” she said. “We filled up from that and still had people for it calling us afterward.”

Martin said her motel’s occupancy rate this summer has been around 82 percent, which is down slightly from 90 percent last summer but still strong.

“We’ve had an archaeology group from New York come and stay here to dig in Iosepa, but mostly we’ve had travelers and truck drivers who find it’s cheaper to get a room instead of sleep in their truck while it’s sitting idle and running with the air conditioning on,” she said. “Now we’re getting a lot more workers from all over the place staying here.

For this next couple of weeks, we’ll have Kennecott workers from all over the country who will be doing cleanup, repair and remodeling at the Kennecott plant while it’s still shut down.”

She said the Oquirrh Motor Inn has also received a good number of Miller Motorsports fans who were unable to find a vacancy in Tooele.

Liz Wagner, manager of the Villa Motel, said that even though she has seen her share of race fans, most of her guests have been workers with business in the area.

“There have been a few people coming for the raceway on the weekends, but most of our guests have been people coming to work for a wide range of different companies in Tooele County,” she said. “There also hasn’t been a real noticeable decrease in guests compared to summer of last year.”

Martin said the recent lowering of gas prices may be a reason why business has been better for her motel than it was at the beginning of the season.

“At the beginning of this summer our percentage of tourists wasn’t even near what it was last summer, but now we’re at about the average of what we were at last year,” she said. “I think it helps that the gas prices have gone down a little bit, and people also may be loosening up on how much they want to spend on gas.”

Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com