Posted on K-Zone, its great to have management talk to the customer
I see several questions out here that I will try to answer in one post:
Closing early – this post was about if we were closing areas early.
I know you all know this – the fact is that people stop coming this time of year even if there is good skiing. As I have said before, we need to balance our costs with our revenue and begin to close areas as volume decreases. I skied yesterday and we have a lot of lifts running with almost no one on them. With that said, we are planning to keep open several areas later than our normal dates (weather permitting) since the conditions have been so great.
See details of the plan here http://www.killington.com/winter/beast/ ... tricks-for
Here are some of the highlights that may interest you:
Pico – added on extra Saturday of skiing – April 5th.
Skye base – will close this weekend – 3/30.
Bear –this area is historically closes after the mogul challenge weekend – With the great weather, we decided to keep it open one week later through the 13thof April.
Ramshead – scheduled to close this weekend. We will close the lodge this weekend (except keep daycare open) but run the lift for the following weekend, April 5th and April 6th.
K- 1 gondola & Peak Lodge– is scheduled to close April 13th. We will keep this area open an extra week depending on weather.
Superstar – will stay open as long as possible. To me this means, if we can still charge guests for skiing, then we will stay open. If you have to walk through three water bars and the experience is not something we can charge for, it is time to close. We followed this plan last year (and gave free skiing the last day since walking was required).
Later hours – start times will not change (9am on weekdays, 8am on weekends) – just adding an hour at the end of the day for the time periods mentioned in the blog.
Snowmaking & Superstar build:
I know there was a lot of debate in this forum if we made enough snow for spring and were we going back on our word when we said "we would focus on to have the longest season in the east."
My answer is that we made approximately 25% more snow than the normal year and costs were through the roof as well (which Jeff explained in a previous post). This resulted in us spending substantially more than plan.
Even with the huge amount of snow we made, we had to skip snowmaking on several areas such as a Superpipe, devil’s fiddle, Boardercross, etc.
Our focus was spending money on snowmaking that helped recovery from the many rain events we encountered this year.
Did this result in us having less snow on superstar than we may want? Probably, but choices have to be made to ensure overall ski conditions in the core part of the season and that trumped a bigger spring build – I will take the blame if you don’t agree with that decision.
Capital improvements:
I have seen several threads about capital for next year and the future. The reality is we spent $10M last year on capital and have invested substantially in the past 7 years of Powdr’s ownership. We will always have a list of big projects that we want to do and it will always be bigger than the available resources. We spend several million dollars a year on what we call “maintenance capital”. The first priority every year is lift maintenance items that help keep the lifts running reliably. Typically next in line is snowmaking, groomer purchases, and other mountain improvements. The problem is these are not really things that our customers see so there is a belief that “we are not investing in the resort”.
This year was planned to be a lighter capital year than normal due to the massive amount we have spent in the past few years. This was the plan before any issues arose at Park City. It is just basic business, if you spend a lot in one year; you need to reduce it in another.
As a result, this year will be focused on mainly maintenance capital items.
Thanks Mike
I see several questions out here that I will try to answer in one post:
Closing early – this post was about if we were closing areas early.
I know you all know this – the fact is that people stop coming this time of year even if there is good skiing. As I have said before, we need to balance our costs with our revenue and begin to close areas as volume decreases. I skied yesterday and we have a lot of lifts running with almost no one on them. With that said, we are planning to keep open several areas later than our normal dates (weather permitting) since the conditions have been so great.
See details of the plan here http://www.killington.com/winter/beast/ ... tricks-for
Here are some of the highlights that may interest you:
Pico – added on extra Saturday of skiing – April 5th.
Skye base – will close this weekend – 3/30.
Bear –this area is historically closes after the mogul challenge weekend – With the great weather, we decided to keep it open one week later through the 13thof April.
Ramshead – scheduled to close this weekend. We will close the lodge this weekend (except keep daycare open) but run the lift for the following weekend, April 5th and April 6th.
K- 1 gondola & Peak Lodge– is scheduled to close April 13th. We will keep this area open an extra week depending on weather.
Superstar – will stay open as long as possible. To me this means, if we can still charge guests for skiing, then we will stay open. If you have to walk through three water bars and the experience is not something we can charge for, it is time to close. We followed this plan last year (and gave free skiing the last day since walking was required).
Later hours – start times will not change (9am on weekdays, 8am on weekends) – just adding an hour at the end of the day for the time periods mentioned in the blog.
Snowmaking & Superstar build:
I know there was a lot of debate in this forum if we made enough snow for spring and were we going back on our word when we said "we would focus on to have the longest season in the east."
My answer is that we made approximately 25% more snow than the normal year and costs were through the roof as well (which Jeff explained in a previous post). This resulted in us spending substantially more than plan.
Even with the huge amount of snow we made, we had to skip snowmaking on several areas such as a Superpipe, devil’s fiddle, Boardercross, etc.
Our focus was spending money on snowmaking that helped recovery from the many rain events we encountered this year.
Did this result in us having less snow on superstar than we may want? Probably, but choices have to be made to ensure overall ski conditions in the core part of the season and that trumped a bigger spring build – I will take the blame if you don’t agree with that decision.
Capital improvements:
I have seen several threads about capital for next year and the future. The reality is we spent $10M last year on capital and have invested substantially in the past 7 years of Powdr’s ownership. We will always have a list of big projects that we want to do and it will always be bigger than the available resources. We spend several million dollars a year on what we call “maintenance capital”. The first priority every year is lift maintenance items that help keep the lifts running reliably. Typically next in line is snowmaking, groomer purchases, and other mountain improvements. The problem is these are not really things that our customers see so there is a belief that “we are not investing in the resort”.
This year was planned to be a lighter capital year than normal due to the massive amount we have spent in the past few years. This was the plan before any issues arose at Park City. It is just basic business, if you spend a lot in one year; you need to reduce it in another.
As a result, this year will be focused on mainly maintenance capital items.
Thanks Mike
