Ski Resort Financials

[skibum1321]

It seems to me that the ski industry must be having a really really bad year so far. I can't speak for everywhere but this weekend was absolutely empty at Smuggs. Considering that this is one of the big ski weekends of the year, they must have been way off of their projected numbers. It seems that Xmas week was a little bit slow too. Does anyone know how far off of projected skier-days any of the resorts actually are (if at all)?

 

[Greg]

I don't know any specifics, but I do know that some New England ski areas (especially southern) had a very good December before the holidays. The great early season conditions probably lead to a number of Christmas week bookings, I'd imagine, despite the actual Christmas week being a flop. The last few weeks must've been tough. Hopefully things will turn around soon so they can have a good February vacation week and end with a decent season.

 

[thetrailboss]

I heard through the grapevine that up until January or so Burke was ahead of last season.

I'm concerned as well. Christmas was short and it rained twice. The thought was, "well, we've got MLK Weekend," and now that has been trashed. :roll: Unfortunately, people are fickle when it comes to skiing in New England--March has some great skiing but people don't want to go because they are thinking of spring. Some of the bigger places are probably OK because they don't give refunds for weekends like this one...so people still come. It's the little places that are probably struggling. I don't think that 10e has gotten above 10 trails open ALL season :blink:

 

[skibum1321]

I just found this...

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=4366902&nav=4QcS

Turns out NH is doing well...

 

[stomachdoc]

Waterville was a ghost town today; more instructors than skiers; however the town was busy, with lots of activity at the athletic center, ice rink, etc. That speaks to the fact that a lot of the hotels/condos are pre-booked. Of course, that doesnt help the mountain (which, by the way, was almost unskiable--I took two runs and gave up) but at least the hotels/restaurants did OK.

I agree that the early season was strong, but Christmas week seemed a little weaker than usual due to the weather.

Hopefully Feb. Vacation will pan out better......

 

[billski]

Waterville was a ghost town today; more instructors than skiers; however the town was busy, with lots of activity at the athletic center, ice rink, etc. That speaks to the fact that a lot of the hotels/condos are pre-booked. Of course, that doesnt help the mountain (which, by the way, was almost unskiable--I took two runs and gave up) but at least the hotels/restaurants did OK.

I agree that the early season was strong, but Christmas week seemed a little weaker than usual due to the weather.

Hopefully Feb. Vacation will pan out better......

As a day tripper, I have never skied this much early in the season than ever before. From the reports of full-out snowmaking operations today, they are working in earnest to build a base to sustain themselves for the next 3 months. They don't want their customer base to run.

The flip side is that making snow is expensive. Real expensive. I'd rather heat a house atop Mt. Katadin with electric than run snow guns. It would not suprise me at the end of the season they are at breakeven. I hope no worse.

February is a much more profitable month than January, as the temps are slightly better and school vactions are a whole week instead of one day. IMHO if February is a bust, they are in deep doo. If they can salvage February,it may break even.
Geez, I'm startin to sound like a @#$%@ weather forecaster.... :blink:

 

[ctenidae]

This wether has got to be stretching snowmaking budgets awfully thin. Not a good thing.

 

[loafer89]

I can speak for the Poconos having skied at three major resorts and I must say that Blue Mountain, Camelback and Montage were fairly deserted for MLK weekend.

I think that MLK weekend was a major bust for alot of southern New England and Mid Atlantic ski areas. It was amazing how fast the resorts did recover from a major thaw, it was dumping buckets of rain on saturday, but there was packed powder on sunday at Blue and at Montage yesterday.

 

[loafer89]

Here are two pictures from the Sugarloaf chat site that show the conditions on Tote Road yesterday. I heard that Tote Road was the ONLY trail available off of the superquad:

Yuck :x

 

[trackbiker]

It appears that the Pocono ski areas are doing great this year. Here's an article from today's Allentown newspaper:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-b1-1ski-4rjan17,0,2389090.story

 

[loafer89]

Hopefully the ski areas in P.A are doing good, but Blue Mountain was deserted on sunday:

Normally one would expect massive crowds on MLK weekend, but the weather on sunday was brutally cold and windy.

 

[thetrailboss]

Word from Ms. Trailboss who got to go skiing at Sunapee today: :x Ski conditions were excellent!

 

[ski_adk]

The unfortunate thing for the ski resorts is that they've been fighting a pretty determined battle to blow as much as possible this year to prepare for the big crowds and mother nature just is not cooperating.

Today, a girl at work mentioned to me that she went to Gore on Sunday -- which was absolutely horrible according to her. The thing that struck me the most though was that she said she said it will make her think twice before going there again.

I quickly pointed out that individual mountains aren't really responsible for nature's fury, but she was not convinced. I don't envy the resorts in any fashion. A lot of their money come from folks like this and having 2 strikes against them so far this year has gotta hurt.

 

[Mark D]

i was at Bear creek on MLK day and it was semi crowded at least in the park (i dont leave the park that offeten at BC)

 

[Joshua B]

I don't know any specifics, but I do know that some New England ski areas (especially southern) had a very good December before the holidays. The great early season conditions probably lead to a number of Christmas week bookings, I'd imagine, despite the actual Christmas week being a flop.

I wouldn't go so far as to call early season conditions as "great." I think only the big snowmaking areas had great conditions. Most other places had very limited terrain open.

 

[Geoff]

I don't know any specifics, but I do know that some New England ski areas (especially southern) had a very good December before the holidays. The great early season conditions probably lead to a number of Christmas week bookings, I'd imagine, despite the actual Christmas week being a flop.

I wouldn't go so far as to call early season conditions as "great." I think only the big snowmaking areas had great conditions. Most other places had very limited terrain open.

I was skiing on a nice natural snow surface with no ice Thanksgiving weekend at Killington. We went pretty much the whole weekend without skiing on any of the high traffic snowmaking terrain. You needed to be on rock boards by Saturday as it got bumped up with rocks in the troughs but it was an ice-free experience and a top-5 in my 25 years of skiing Killington on Thanksgiving.

 

[ckofer]

It's kinda like plane flights. It's great if you can get on a plane that's only 20 percent booked at a discount rate. That isn't so good for the airlines though...

I love empty ski areas but don't want to pay $150 a ticket nor do I want them to go broke.