In part. The real reason is to persuade people to buy a season pass. In this case, an Ikon Pass. Vail came up with that strategy.
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VAIL SUCKS
- Thread starter thebigo
- Start date
And Sugarbush is now $169.00 a day? That is more than a day ticket to Snowbird on a regular non-holiday weekend.
After reading their blog post, they discuss "dynamic pricing". I find this similar to buying a plane ticket--the price is always fluctuating based upon demand. It's kind of frustrating if you are one of the few who still buys day tickets. Once again the strategy is to get folks to stop buying day tickets and to make a more significant financial commitment. Besides, while day ticket margins are better the risk is higher. What I mean is that dayticket skiers and riders are less frequent and more fickle. A bad snow weekend? Fewer day tickets sold. A powder day? More day tickets sold. And, as Win has pointed out before to Sugarbush Skiers and Riders, in a typical season the number of days to "make money" are relatively few--pretty much every Saturday, Sunday, and holiday. Over an entire season that is not a lot. Plus there is more competition for day ticket sales. So I take the comments about a drop in day ticket sales with a grain of salt. The WHOLE point of their model is to stop selling day tickets. OF COURSE the number is going to go down.
After reading their blog post, they discuss "dynamic pricing". I find this similar to buying a plane ticket--the price is always fluctuating based upon demand. It's kind of frustrating if you are one of the few who still buys day tickets. Once again the strategy is to get folks to stop buying day tickets and to make a more significant financial commitment. Besides, while day ticket margins are better the risk is higher. What I mean is that dayticket skiers and riders are less frequent and more fickle. A bad snow weekend? Fewer day tickets sold. A powder day? More day tickets sold. And, as Win has pointed out before to Sugarbush Skiers and Riders, in a typical season the number of days to "make money" are relatively few--pretty much every Saturday, Sunday, and holiday. Over an entire season that is not a lot. Plus there is more competition for day ticket sales. So I take the comments about a drop in day ticket sales with a grain of salt. The WHOLE point of their model is to stop selling day tickets. OF COURSE the number is going to go down.
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thebigo
Well-known member
I made sure I ran the numbers today before discussing with the wife tonight. If you are a family that hopes to ski Halloween thru memorial day every year the vail pass is not even a good deal, not to mention all the other bs. Vail believes that pushing the wildcat season past four months is some benevolent gift to passholders. The result is day tickets through November and a k spring pass - both add up fast when buying for a family.
We are planning ikon base plus ragged next year. Kids will do seasonal program at ragged. Ikon will cover sr early season, sugarbush February vacation, loaf April vacation, k Saturdays in May and mix in the loon days midweek. Ragged also gets 50% off at pats for a few weeknights.
Maybe try to find a three month winter rental on newfound
This will be my first year without a crotch/attitash/Cat pass in as long as I can remember. I do not want to leave but the sheer volume of abuse inflicted on the new hampshire passholder by vail has broken me.
We are planning ikon base plus ragged next year. Kids will do seasonal program at ragged. Ikon will cover sr early season, sugarbush February vacation, loaf April vacation, k Saturdays in May and mix in the loon days midweek. Ragged also gets 50% off at pats for a few weeknights.
Maybe try to find a three month winter rental on newfound
This will be my first year without a crotch/attitash/Cat pass in as long as I can remember. I do not want to leave but the sheer volume of abuse inflicted on the new hampshire passholder by vail has broken me.
I need them to figure things out or sell some shit off before they get a dime from me. I was reluctant this year. I got my money's worth but can do better.
kingslug
Well-known member
Well it worked for SB. I was there when it snowed every day and it was pretty much empty. Stowe was packed. It was worth the 169.00 x4 to get away from that for a few days.
Smellytele
Well-known member
For 1 more ticket you could have a Icon base
RichT
Active member
As a mostly Hunter skier, this year was a double edged sword. Long lift lines with NOT skied off trails. I'm afraid that this new pricing will bring even more people to the Mtn on weekends, resulting in the place being skied off by 10:30! Thank GOD i'm retired now, so no more weekends, BUT I think the days of empty weekdays are over for now.
kingslug
Well-known member
Yup. but that was 2 tix for each of us... we have one now. I used to hit SB a few times and it was nowhere that expensive so it was no big deal. The insanity at Stowe drove me there..and I like SB better than Stowe now, so I will be there more.
Hastur
Well-known member
I wonder if Vail will even notice losing 10k passes in NH if they are selling 1million of these things.
drjeff
Well-known member
That was fairly typical of SB midweek though even when they had cheaper tickets...
I have a feeling vt will be more crowded next year. Vt had a lot more restrictions than nh, I lot of people were avoiding vt last year because of that. The killer for the nh epics is they are unrestricted for holiday weeks, Vermont’s are restricted. Going to be packed for those weeks. Is vail going to run the nh properties better next year. Or is it going to be cheap pass, so you get what you pay for.
Hastur
Well-known member
They might take it as confirmation that they can keep running the places like crap.
"See, skier visits are down anyway. No need to replace that summit triple, or to push the snowmaking to extend the season at Wildcat''
Whitey
Member
You are all waaay too cynical. I have some intel as I'll just say that I took a job at one of the VR ski mtns this year, but I am not a homer. It wasn't a financial decision that caused the snow making and grooming problems. The problems with snowmaking early in the season were related to the same problems throughout the ski business this year; staffing and turnover. The loss of seasonal international employees due to CV19 restrictions really hurt them for staffing. And furloughing most of their employees in March of 2020 resulted in significant turnover as those people found other jobs or just disappeared. And as everyone knows now - the idea that all of the people who worked in F&B and hotels/lodging would just somehow magically flip over to jobs in tickets, grooming, snowmaking, etc never happened. Instead they just disappeared, vanished. I would also note that November and early December were not good months for snow-making in the northeast. We had a lot of really warm days and struggled to build the base early.
The start to the ski season was a sh1t show and everyone was working lifts, shoveling snow, etc. because they couldn't re-staff fast enough. You could fault them for not recognizing that earlier and being better prepared, but opening a ski area amidst CV19 restrictions was not fun and there was no road map on how to handle it. We were behind on EVERYTHING that you would ordinarily be doing in the off-season to get ready for the next season. People forget that it was significantly different in November than it is now. There were legit concerns that the VT/NH/ME governors would close ski areas. It was a mess but we had no options but to launch and do the best we could.
Vail's strategy is obvious: Most believe that there is a huge pent up demand for travel & entertainment because everyone has been locked down for a year. And the experience coming out of CV19 is that you are best doing something outdoors and not packed in with other people; malls, theaters, amusement parks, etc are dead. But go to a mountain and ski or mountain bike or ride the lift on a nice summer day - yup! They are making moves to ride that wave for next season and capture a huge chunk of that market share. It is actually pretty smart if you really think about it.
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thebigo
Well-known member
Your post left me nostalgic for the days when the summit triple was the greatest of our concerns. One positive from vail this year: we forgot all about the triple.
- No Kachina all season.
- No yankee during the week.
- No yankee before january.
- Complete lack of snowmaking effort at wildcat.
- No singles line anywhere in NH.
- Whales left to drain for several weeks before being pushed out.
- Wildcat opening weeks after hunter.
- Bullet proof whales and snowguns in the middle of lynx opening day.
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Smellytele
Well-known member
Why didn’t other ski areas get effected the same by covid? They failed...
mbedle
Well-known member
Looked at my account today and they added a section for credits. Maybe they are rethinking the credit issues.
Exactly. None of the local competition to Vails NH ski areas had the same issues. I'd argue it WAS financial mismanagement by Vail. They waited too long to hire people and I've read they offered lower wages than the competition. So, the available employees went elsewhere.
abc
Well-known member
Do you think the government checks (and unemployment payment) may have kept people from taking the minimum wage jobs resorts offered?
When you are competing against no questions asked, endless and boosted unemployment you have to pay decent. Anyone that's been lucky enough to be working in hospitality in the past year has been you've probably been short staffed (more than usual) and working OT. there has been plenty of open jobs all along. Vail didn't adjust to it. 12 bucks an hour for a resort job walking in or double that to file every week and a cheap pass? Yeah good luck finding help lol
