"They are running through the whole building, and they just pop into the guest rooms to see who is in," said Monika Kutrová, who owns the lions and works at the hotel. "Then the lions lie in a corner and watch what's going on in the room."

"It's true that some people are now arriving just to play with the lions," Kutrová said.

Prague had its warmest New Year's Day since temperatures were first recorded in 1775, at 12.5 degrees Celsius (54.5 degrees Fahrenheit). The rest of the Czech Republic has also settled into a warm winter with little precipitation, a combination that has spelled ruin for ski operators and people whose businesses rely on the traffic from skiers.

Ski operators are holding out hope that the snow will come or, at the very least, that temperatures will drop low enough for them to spray snow from their snow machines. But some are already tallying up their losses.

"The lack of snow over Christmas will reduce our seasonal revenues by at least one-fourth," said Vladimír Kasík, co-owner of the Sport Service company, which operates the Špičák ski resort in Železná Ruda, west Bohemia. Last year, the company reached revenues of 36 million Kč ($1.7 million).

Other ski-resort operators did not want to speculate about how much the lack of snow could cost them. They agreed that the weather conditions in December and early January were the worst in a decade.

"The Christmas period traditionally belongs to the peak of the ski season, so it is obvious that it'll affect our revenues," said Martina Čermáková, marketing executive at Skiareál Špindl in Špindlerův Mlýn in north Bohemia's Krkonoše Mountains.

Out of 26 kilometers (16 miles) of slopes in the popular resort, only 4 kilometers were available to skiers Jan. 3.

Čermáková said the Skiareál Špindl management decided to sell tickets at discounted prices in order to reflect the limited skiing opportunities. As a result, the price of a one-day pass for an adult was reduced from 750 Kč to 250 Kč. The operator hopes to play catch-up late in the season.

"The overall financial impact will really depend on how the weather looks in February and March," Čermáková said.

Worries about the seasonal revenues forced Skiareál Špindl management to reject the planned World Cup mogul skiing championship that was scheduled to take place there Feb. 3. Closing moneymaking runs for two days to host the event was out of the question, Skiareál Špindl Director Jiří Beran said.

"We'd need to close part of our best slope to the public," he said. "Not only would this further lower our revenues from public skiing, but we'd also run the risk that adjusting the slope for mogul skiing would ruin the surface."

Several fat skiing years allowed operators to expand, and many bought new snow machines and are launching new funiculars and lifts. Altogether, Czech resorts have invested hundreds of millions of crowns.

Snowhill, a company that operates six ski resorts in north Bohemia, spent 400 million Kč on upgrades, company spokeswoman Radka Záhořová said.

"It's a pity that we could not show off the new facilities during the holiday season," Záhořová said.

Trickling down

Hoteliers in some regions report a 30 percent drop in visitors from previous years.

But that number is misleading. Many of the guests who have come to the region booked their ski vacations months in advance and were forced to pay for the trip despite the lack of snow. Seasonal businesses have been scrounging to attract those visitors.

"People ask whether we've got snow, and, when they hear that we don't, they ask whether they can at least rent mountain bikes," said Miloš Šrámek, director of the Medlov hotel in Vysočina.

Czech mountain towns rely more heavily on snow than their counterparts in Western Europe, said Vít Moudrý, who runs Monkey Park, an adrenaline-sports complex in Špindlerův Mlýn.

About 60 percent of visitors to mountain towns in the winter are skiers, while in Western Europe that number is closer to 40 percent, he said.

That's been a boon to Monkey Park, which has a bobsled track, obstacle course and paragliding facilities. The park is having a banner year thanks to the disgruntled vacationers it is drawing from the surrounding area.