One word summed up Ski Utah's annual kick-off-the-season-opening press conference Tuesday:

Deals! Deals! Deals!

Well, OK, three words.

Ski Utah, the marketing arm for Utah's 13 ski and snowboard resorts, has been around since 1978 and never has it sold a winter like it's selling this one.

"This is the year of the deal," said Nathan Rafferty, president of Ski Utah.

There are all sorts of terrific bargains out there, he said. Lodges and hotels are offering the third night free after you pay for the first two, others are offering the fourth night free after you pay for the first three. Some have cut their rates in half. Many are putting lift tickets on the pillows alongside the mints. The Stein Eriksen Lodge is having a sale!

It's like Vegas, but with ski lifts instead of casinos.

But wait. There's more. Early season bargains can also be had on lift passes, car rentals, mountainside dining, ski rentals and snowboard rentals … Airfare is 17 percent cheaper across the board than last year at this time.

Many of these bargains are listed on the Ski Utah Web site (www.skiutah.com) under "Hot Deals" and "The White Sale."

"This is a sale of stuff you'll actually get excited about," the Web site proclaims. "No dish towels or table runners."

"Deals you've never seen before," said Rafferty, sounding like Bob Barker.

All this is in response to last winter, which ran into something of an imperfect storm: a collapsing economy, heavy snow in the East and spotty midseason snowfall out here in the real mountains.

By the time those 14 feet fell in 14 days in March it was too late.

It wasn't that the season was a total wash. Utah's 13 resorts still reported 3,972,984 skier days, the fourth highest total in history.

But it marked the first time in five years that the number of skier days went down instead of up; and it was the first dip below 4 million since 2005.

It added up to a 6.5 percent decline from the 2007-08 record-setting season when the economy was robust, snow fell on demand and there were 4,249,190 skier days.

Worse, the national average, with a 5.5 percent decline, dipped less.

So the Utah winter-sport resort industry, which accounts for around $1 billion tourism revenue annually, has responded with, what else, a deeply discounted winter. They're throwing in everything short of a side trip to Colorado.

Will it work? Rafferty thinks so.

"I like the term 'boldly optimistic,'" he says, and then explains why.