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Boyne, Peak, Powdr, Fairbanks, and Vail

sull1102

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So I was over on wiki looking at the skiable acres for these companies and included Fairbanks although those resorts don't really operate like sister resorts because the relationship is a little strange. Here's what I got...

First the resorts I looked up and companies

Boyne- Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Loon Mountain
Peak Resorts- Mount Snow, Crotched, Attitash, Wildcat, Hunter
Vail- Okemo, Stowe, Sunapee
Powdr- Killington, Pico
Fairbanks- Bromley, Cranmore, Jiminy Peak

Combined these companies control appox 7,980 acres.

Boyne controls noticeably more terrain than anyone else at 2640 acres, or 33%. These numbers are possibly a little off because Sugarloaf lists so much acreage for tree skiing.

Powdr comes in second despite having one resort and a weekends only mountain, but when you run the crown jewel of the East that's just how it works. Killington/Pico gives Powdr roughly 25%(24.77 to be exact) with 1977 acres.

For Peak Resorts I did include Hunter in the numbers despite it being the only non New England resort on the list. All told Peak Resorts has 1465 acres, good for 18% of the 7,980 acres.

Newcomer to the east, Vail, suddenly has 1,350 acres under their control to give them 17%. It will be interesting to see what their next move is, even a couple of expansions here and there could give them a little more than Peak, but only us enthusiasts are looking at these numbers I bet.

I included Fairbanks just for the hell of it and to get a few more resorts worth of data. At just 548 acres, Fairbanks has just under 7% of the grand total, less than Mount Snow would have alone, despite having three pretty solid family mountains spread throughout the region(good diversity there for sure).

The one company I did not include that I imagine will become a much bigger player in the east is Alterra. For now they have Stratton, but there is always the potential for them to buy more down the road.
 

slatham

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It's interesting that all but the Fairbanks areas are under multi-resort passes, in some cases more than one. In fact even some of the independent areas are under some form of multi-pass or at least multi-area discount schemes via Freedom pass. I wonder how long Fairbanks can hold out?
 

sull1102

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You left out the vast Butternut-Otis-Blanford empire.

I was thinking about including them and the BEAST with their new friends over at Catamount. If the Mighty B-O-B were to buy Bousquet they would be nipping on Fairbanks heels with 528 acres, I'm sure we could find 20 acres of unlisted tree skiing to make up the gap. Of course skier visit numbers are more important to the bottom line and I'm sure Jiminy Cranmore Bromley bring in a lot more people.
 

thetrailboss

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Interesting statistics. But, again, the way to determine marketshare is skier/rider days. Not acreage.
 

cdskier

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Interesting statistics. But, again, the way to determine marketshare is skier/rider days. Not acreage.

The challenge there is that those numbers are not always publicly available for each resort.
 

thetrailboss

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I wish they were available for all resorts...I'd love to see them and do some real data analysis.

We can get "some" idea for a few places. But no precise numbers.

In terms of a monopoly issue the be-all and end-all is skier days and who has what marketshare.
 
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