Vail Resorts is buying Peak Resorts.

[slatham]

Less than 24 hours after the PEAK Resorts acquisition announcement, I received an email from Vail that said, "new mountains in your area are now EPIC". They can do this because they have the home address & email address of everyone who's skied one of their resorts. I'm surprised you dont have to scan your EPIC pass at lunch so they know if you like Diet Coke or Hawaiian Punch.

That will be soon. Use your Epic pass as credit card, get a discount for doing so (incentive for not using CC or cash), and then they have data on eating/drinking habits too.

Big (ski) brother

 

[Domeskier]

13 day average doesn't seem particularly low to me. That's at least once a week from mid-Dec to mid-March.

 

[Tonyr]

13 day average doesn't seem particularly low to me. That's at least once a week from mid-Dec to mid-March.

I've also heard from someone in the ski industry before that 12 days is around the average time a person skis per year.

 

[BenedictGomez]

I've also heard from someone in the ski industry before that 12 days is around the average time a person skis per year.

It's much lower than that. I forget the exact number, but I want to say it's closer to 4 days. I know someone here will remember it & share.

EDIT: God helps those who help themselves. It was 5.8 in 2017-2018 ^ 5.9 in 2016-2017.

 

[mbedle]

It's going to be way, way, way > 25,000.


Vail sells over 900k "passes" by itself, plus about 100k of those are those military passes, which are probably barely even used. Then you have IKON which is over 250k penetration & ramping. So that "13 average days" thing IMO is pretty much an irrelevant stat now, because the data used to calculate it has essentially been contaminated to the point where the output is no longer representative of what people think it means.

What do you mean that the data has been contaminated? Contaminated by what? Not sure what you are trying to say here.

 

[slatham]

What do you mean that the data has been contaminated? Contaminated by what? Not sure what you are trying to say here.

I think he means that the old season pass data, which was based on old fashion single-area season passes, is not comparable to current data that now is heavily influenced by multi-area passes. Completely different dynamic - apples and oranges.

 

[cdskier]

I think he means that the old season pass data, which was based on old fashion single-area season passes, is not comparable to current data that now is heavily influenced by multi-area passes. Completely different dynamic - apples and oranges.

Another interesting fact that changes the dynamic...the break even point has rather significantly shifted. Years ago at many areas you needed to ski 20+ days to break even on a pass. Now that number is often 10 days or in some cases even lower. Let's use Stowe as a concrete example of this. In 2012/2013, you had to use your pass 23 days before you were ahead. Now it is down to under 7 days. So now someone taking a vacation for a week could easily consider a pass just for that vacation and never use it again the rest of the season. People that purchase it for that type of scenario are driving that number of days per passholder down further where years ago that was unlikely to happen as buying a pass meant you had to commit to quite a few days just to break even. So in 2012 for example if you purchased a Stowe pass and only skied 10 days, you were losing quite a bit of money.

 

[BenedictGomez]

I think he means that the old season pass data, which was based on old fashion single-area season passes, is not comparable to current data that now is heavily influenced by multi-area passes. Completely different dynamic - apples and oranges.

Correct.

 

[slatham]

Another interesting fact that changes the dynamic...the break even point has rather significantly shifted. Years ago at many areas you needed to ski 20+ days to break even on a pass. Now that number is often 10 days or in some cases even lower. Let's use Stowe as a concrete example of this. In 2012/2013, you had to use your pass 23 days before you were ahead. Now it is down to under 7 days. So now someone taking a vacation for a week could easily consider a pass just for that vacation and never use it again the rest of the season. People that purchase it for that type of scenario are driving that number of days per passholder down further where years ago that was unlikely to happen as buying a pass meant you had to commit to quite a few days just to break even. So in 2012 for example if you purchased a Stowe pass and only skied 10 days, you were losing quite a bit of money.

Yes this is me this winter. Heading to Taos to ski with my brother (3-4 days) and at least one trip to Sugarbush to ski with my Brother in Law. So I bought the Ikon base pass. With these 2 trips I've basically broken even. So a second Sugarbush trip, a jaunt to Killington and a trek across the valley to Stratton is all gravy. But even if everything comes together I doubt I get more than 10 days. So that skews the "average" number of days skied on the pass lower, yet I do better than day tickets.

 

[kingslug]

The minute I got an Epic pass and started going to Stowe my day count went from 30 to 40. Now with Hunter on it, it could go higher as I can just take a day off and ski in peace mid week up there.

 

[BenedictGomez]

The minute I got an Epic pass and started going to Stowe my day count went from 30 to 40. Now with Hunter on it, it could go higher as I can just take a day off and ski in peace mid week up there.

Didnt you buy real estate in Stowe? That's why your days went up, not because of EPIC. It's not like you'd buy real estate & then refuse to buy a Stowe season pass.

 

[kendo]

The minute I got an Epic pass and started going to Stowe my day count went from 30 to 40. Now with Hunter on it, it could go higher as I can just take a day off and ski in peace mid week up there.

Same here. Big bump in annual days using Epic. Prior Traveler mid wk pass for Hunter and skied most Fridays. Added Epic last year and took 4 Sun-Thurs trips to Stowe plus a wk at Telluride. Already booked the same for this yr and will throw in random Fridays at Hunter at no additional cost.

 

[kingslug]

We bought there because the epic made it reasonable. A season pass before that was pretty expensive and limiting. We also moved closer to Stowe..as in CT so its only...a 5 hour drive.
My wife didn't ski one day and went shopping...apparently for a condo..and not a hat..

 

[drjeff]

The stockholders proxy vote on the merger is scheduled for tomorrow, September 20th

 

[cdskier]

The stockholders proxy vote on the merger is scheduled for tomorrow, September 20th

Stockholders approved. 89% voted in favor. Targeting September 24th to close, although not sure if the lawsuits could delay/stop that.


Sent from my iPhone using AlpineZone

 

[andrec10]

Come on and close. I need to upgrade my Peak pass to a Epic pass...

 

[abc]

My wife didn't ski one day and went shopping...apparently for a condo..and not a hat..

 

[andrec10]

The closing was today...

https://www.epicpass.com/info/peak-resorts-release.aspx

 

[njdiver85]

So upgrade price assuming you bought your Peak Pass early will be $310 to get the unlimited Epic Pass.

 

[drjeff]

So upgrade price assuming you bought your Peak Pass early will be $310 to get the unlimited Epic Pass.

Depends on what Epic pass product that you're interested in and when when you bought your Peak pass as I understand it. The details of all the options I'm guessing will be released in the very near future.