There's plenty of room at the inn this Christmas — at least in Tooele. With the city's regular, long-stay motel occupants at home with their families for the Christmas break, managers of local motels say business has been down once again this holiday season.

Carol Gibson, manager of Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites, said most of her guests are business travelers, but those people stay home during the holidays.  

"We mostly get military workers and government contractors who stay here during the year, but around the holidays we'll see a decrease because they all go home," she said. "Throughout the winter we have family and friends stay to visit people here in the area, but it's little bit slow right now. Still, we've only been in town for a little over a year now, and compared to the Christmas season last year, business has been about the same now as it was then."

Gibson said the average room occupancy rate at the 64-room Holiday Inn has been running at about 60 to 65 percent since the beginning of December, but that the spring and summer rates can sometimes top out at 100 percent.

Winter business has also been slow at the 32-room Tooele Best Western Inn, where training supervisor Ginny Rhea said the occupancy rate has been running between 30 to 50 percent in recent weeks.

"For this holiday season, we've been about half-full or less than that, but last year during this time we were at about 65 percent," she said. "However, this year for Thanksgiving we were at 65 percent full, which is up 20 percent from Thanksgiving time last year. We have very few businesspeople around this time of the season — unlike the rest of the year — and we've been going down ever since the summer ended."

Rhea said unsafe weather conditions may be a reason why occupancy rates have dipped so much this holiday season.

"Lots of people may have told their families to stay home this winter because of the snow," she said. "During the holidays we mostly get travelers who want to see family, and some of them are traveling to another place or visiting someone here."

Garth Jones, owner of the 47-room Kirk Hotel, said his business has also been slow during the winter, with occupancy rates around 50 to 60 percent. The historic hotel offers nightly, weekly and monthly rentals, and Jones said his winter business comes mostly from locals who need a new place to live and are looking for a monthly rental, as well as people visiting family during the holidays.

"We've been about half-full during the winter, but we're also much busier during the spring and summer, with usually all the rooms being filled for the summer," he said. "We're always slow during the winter, and things have been about the same this year as they were last year. Mostly during the year we have people who work for the government and military, as well as big business groups, but we also have summer tourists as well."

Not every innkeeper, however, has seen business drop this holiday season. Ginger Martin, manager of the 41-room Oquirrh Motor Inn in Lake Point, said that although her business is still slow during the winter, she has seen occupancy rates get a little better each winter season over the last three years.

"Over Christmas, we get truck drivers or other workers who can't make it home for Christmas, and we have been higher this year than we were last year," she said. "During the year we usually get construction workers, people working at Kennecott, or people going out to businesses like EnergySolutions or US Magnesium — but they all go home over the holidays."

Martin said higher fuel prices may actually be helping her business.

"With diesel fuel so expensive now, diesel drivers are finding that it's cheaper to rent a room than to sleep in their truck and keep it running to stay warm," she said. "Some truck drivers are also offered bonuses to stay out for Christmas. There was a truck driver who hauled for the military that we talked to, and he said he was given an $8,000 bonus to stay out on the road for Christmas."

Local hoteliers say summertime is when they do their best business, largely because of the races at Miller Motorsports Park. Rhea said the races, which attract fans from all over the world, have been a boon for local motels.

"For the races, we don't have enough motels because all the rooms fill up around here," she said. "We've even had people call us upset that we're already full, and we can be full for 3 to 4 days sometimes."

Because of the major draw from the races, some local motels also raise their rates during the summertime. The Kirk Hotel's nightly rental rates go from $75 a night in the summer to $60 a night in the winter, while Holiday Inn's rental rates range from $129 to $159 a night in the summer to between $95 and $115 a night in the winter. Gibson said Tooele County's lack of ski resorts has made the valley not as popular of a place for winter vacationers.

"We don't get a lot of people who are vacationing and wanting to ski during the winter," she said. "If we were closer to the ski resorts or had ski resorts here, we'd probably get a lot more people staying here for the winter."

Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com