There were a record number of visits to the venues operated by the Olympic Regional Development Authority in the 2025-26 fiscal year. Officials attribute the interest to several factors including state investment.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office says there were more than 1.2 million visits to ORDA’s venues, excluding conference center events, custom groups and non-ticketed events. The figures include a nine-percent increase in skiers to Gore, Belleayre and Whiteface mountains and the cross-country skiing site at Mount Van Hoevenberg.
ORDA Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Communications Tait Wardlaw says visitation across all venues has been steadily increasing since 2021.
“There are several reasons for that growth. ORDA over the last 7 years has significantly improved its guest experience across all of its venues. It also reflects a better operational execution. And Mother Nature helps us out with a great year of snow.”
Wardlaw notes events not included in the visitor data may significantly raise attendance and revenues.
“We think that the non-ticketed, non-accounted for audience across all venues over the course of the entire year falls somewhere between 800,000 and a million additional visitations. So the total number of visitors is anywhere between 1.8 and 2 million visitors last year and a little bit more so this year.”
The increase in visits have a spinoff effect on local communities.
Town of Minerva Supervisor Stephen McNally also chairs the Essex County Board of Supervisors.
“Essex County receives most of our revenue through sales tax from tourism and the governor has done a wonderful job building the infrastructure with ORDA to support tourism. And the more people that come and use the facilities the better it is for the entire economy.”
Lake Placid Mayor Art Devlin explains any sales tax revenue generated by visitors goes to the county.
“The only thing that really brings us income in is property tax and we cannot raise it more than 2% a year. So that really doesn’t help the village at least from our administrative side. But it helps the village in general. You know, when businesses do well, they upgrade their facilities and it attracts people and you don’t have empty stores. Not just the village, but the town and Wilmington and the people around here, it’s really great for us.”
The numbers issued by the governor’s office indicate that most visits occurred in the winter.
McNally notes the number of tourists coming to the region varies widely depending on the weather.
“This year we had record snowfalls. We had a wonderful ski season, so that helps us. You know, the small town I live in, if we get snow the traffic on the road doubles headed to Gore Mountain. A lot of it is weather dependent, but infrastructure is the key and ORDA’s leading the way with that and hopefully the towns are doing a little better, the county’s doing a little better making our venues more receptive to the tourist dollar.”
The ORDA Board in December authorized hiring a consultant to review current and future maintenance needs and whether the authority has enough staff to run the venues. At the time, ORDA President and CEO Ashley Walden explained the report will include a full assessment.
“It’s a huge amount of infrastructure that we have of varying vintages. This strategic plan includes a full conditions assessment. There’s also a workforce component. They will help us to put together a routine maintenance plan that helps us to build the workforce to support that.”
Wardlaw says, by hiring the consultant, the board is framing long-term strategic fiscal and infrastructure goals and objectives.
“We are fairly comfortable with where we are positioned today to be able to service 250,000 skiers at Whiteface for example. But we also need to ask ourselves are we positioned well for growth across the Olympic Authority, both in terms of HR and in terms of facilities infrastructure.”
Devlin says if there are staffing or maintenance issues, it’s not obvious to the user.
“I’ve skied quite a bit this year. I’ve been to events at the bob run. They’ve had back-to-back world class events and maybe they’re having problems, but I don’t see any of it. Everything looks really, really good.”
There are more than 1,500 full-time employees working at ORDA’s six venues. The study will take a year to 18 months to complete.
