Ian Morris usually heads for Chamonix, France, this time of year. The ski resort in Mont Blanc’s shadow is a favorite for Mr. Morris, a mid-40s resident of the island of Guernsey off the south coast of England.

This winter, however, Mr. Morris went skiing at Jackson Hole near Jackson, Wyo. The strong British pound – up 20% against the U.S. dollar since December 2002 – is one reason he checked out Rocky Mountain snow for the first time ever. It made his American vacation much cheaper.

“Obviously the pound doesn’t hurt,” Mr. Morris said from his Jackson hotel room.

The same holds true for continental Europeans, whose euro is at a record high against the dollar. Currencies from countries including Australia and Canada have also advanced, with the dollar falling steadily on worries over American trade and budget deficits.

In the process, American ski areas say they’re benefiting. Resorts throughout the Rockies are expecting an uptick in visitors with foreign accents – and money to spend.

According to the Travel Industry Association of America, international arrivals are expected to rise 7.5% in 2004 and another 5% next year, due in part to European bargain hunters.

To keep up the momentum, American ski resorts have focused their marketing on these international guests. Officials at resorts from Breckenridge, Colo., to Lake Tahoe, Calif., say they’re boosting the amount of money they spend to lure skiers from abroad.

And Killington in Vermont, the largest resort in the East, has seen a 10% to 12% rise in reservations for the winter, most of it from Britons. That’s a market Killington courts by participating each year in a ski show in London. Roughly 6% of Killington’s annual business comes from Europe.

“I think the U.K. is a natural market for New England,” said Bill Stenger, president of Vermont’s Jay Peak Resort along the Canadian border. “If you were to look at European skiers in terms of what they like and what their ability level is, because the U.K. requires travel to ski, they are not typically as proficient as the French, Germans, Austrians, or the Swiss. So the U.K. folks like our terrain. They like the fact that they’re in an English-speaking environment and they feel like they get treated very, very well when they come to Vermont.”

The increased strength of the Canadian dollar has also helped. Half of Jay Peak’s annual business comes from Canadians.

Resorts love international guests because, although foreign skiers account for less than a tenth of all lift tickets sold in America, foreigners often stay longer than their American counterparts – up to 10 days – and leave plenty of dollars at hotels, shops, and malls while they’re here.

“They typically spend just as much, if not more, per day, as a U.S. destination skier,” said Kelly Ladyga, a spokeswoman for Colorado based Vail Resorts, which expects a second year of growth in international visitors that exceeds 10%.

That doesn’t mean all of North America is pleased with the currency development.

In 2003, international visits to ski resorts in Canada fell nearly a third as the Canadian dollar rose 20% against the U.S. standard. It rose another 7.5% in 2004.

Intrawest, the owner of British Columbia’s Whistler Mountain, has blamed sluggish visits on the currency.

“Our Canadian resorts saw a decline in U.S. visitors, driven by the rise of the Canadian dollar and the recent trend of Americans to stay at home,” Intrawest President Joe Houssian told investors recently.

Advance air bookings to Jackson, Wyo., are up 18% over last year, said Anna Olsen, a spokeswoman for the resort, where up to 12% of skiers come from outside the United States.

Even in Idaho, where the relative isolation of ski areas such as Sun Valley makes them hard to reach for European visitors, tourism officials say there is anecdotal evidence of greater attention.

“Typically we have interest from European journalists,” said Ellen Gillespie, a spokeswoman for the central Idaho resort, where 4% of guests come from abroad. “But now we’re getting calls from tour operators who are putting people on planes.”

This couldn’t come at a better time for American ski areas.

Two of the biggest, American Skiing Co. and Vail Resorts, have lost $125 million combined in two years and are trying to lure skiers from just about anywhere to pad their finances. Skier visits in America over last 25 years have stagnated, rising on average less than 1% a year.

So far, European countries with vaunted ski industries, such as Austria and Switzerland, insist they aren’t seeing an exodus of tourists. Even with the collapse of the American dollar, Austria’s tourism ministry reports a 13% increase in American visitors in 2004, compared to a year earlier.

And the number of American vacationers in Switzerland, whose franc has also risen to a record, is expected to increase up to 10% this year, national tourist board Swiss Tourism said.

“The people who are coming this winter booked long before the American dollar sunk so low,” said Sylvia Devito, a spokeswoman in Zurich.

For information about ski resorts throughout America, check out the state-by-state directory at www.goski.com/usa.htm. Each listing has a link to the resort’s Web site.