VAIL SUCKS

[JimG.]

The way i see it is...we could end up going back to relying on natural snow..which is impossible...

That's when I'll be looking to move out west. Like up to interior Alaska.

Fail might make that happen much sooner than later, we shall see.

 

[Geoff]

No way...

Alex Kaufman was SR's Snow Reporter ages ago, maybe 20 years ago.
Then he moved to PR, and was involved w/ the first SR "official" Blog/Forum.
AK moved west, and SR bailed on the "official" Forum.

That was all Skip King. He set it up at all the ASC resorts and had a message board called CyberLodge as his sandbox. Steve Wright, a familiar Jay Peak name now, ran the one at Killington. All the resort marketing people had dotted line reporting to Skip as the corporate VP. When Otten quit, it all imploded. Most of the resort GMs didn’t understand the internet and didn’t want to pay staff to nanny a message board filled with flames. Skiers who do every weekend at your resort are the best marketing you’ve got. When they go 100% negative, it costs you a lot of customers. Year 1 of POWDR at Killington is a textbook example. They lost 50% of their skier visits.

 

[deadheadskier]

Only company that has screwed me over worse than vail is Subaru. I would recommend you spend tomorrow at a Toyota dealership.

Don't tempt me like that.

Doesn't take much to get me to detour a thread into Subaru bashing

 

[2Planker]

That was all Skip King. He set it up at all the ASC resorts and had a message board called CyberLodge as his sandbox. Steve Wright, a familiar Jay Peak name now, ran the one at Killington. All the resort marketing people had dotted line reporting to Skip as the corporate VP. When Otten quit, it all imploded. Most of the resort GMs didn’t understand the internet and didn’t want to pay staff to nanny a message board filled with flames. Skiers who do every weekend at your resort are the best marketing you’ve got. When they go 100% negative, it costs you a lot of customers. Year 1 of POWDR at Killington is a textbook example. They lost 50% of their skier visits.

Skip was SR Patrol Director and hired me in 1991...
He became Marketing VP when Burt Mills left as Mt Mngr.
He saw the importance of Internet blog/forums light years ahead of everybody else.

 

[Geoff]

Good luck I recommend just carrying several quarts of oil and refilling as needed

I am on my 2nd engine the 1st one blew up after the gaskets already had been replaced. To be fair almost 200k miles at this point

Meh. The repair isn’t going to cost me a dime. I have a 7/100k extended warranty. It’s a 6 cylinder that doesn’t have the issues of the 4 cylinder. This Forester loaner is very unrefined compared to mine. No way I’d own a car with a normally aspirated Subaru 4-cylinder. I haven’t driven a turbo to have an opinion.

 

[IceEidolon]

I didn't apply because I had housing already squares away, but I saw multiple Northeast resorts advertise $18/hr+ for entry level mountain ops jobs pre pandemic. $15 starting rate gets "that's too low" and "that's so high" comments whenever it comes up. I've also seen substantially lower than that offered, at corporate and indy places.

 

[Geoff]

Skip was SR Patrol Director and hired me in 1991...
He became Marketing VP when Burt Mills left as Mt Mngr.
He saw the importance of Internet blog/forums light years ahead of everybody else.

I skied some runs with Skip and Burt when Burt was running The Canyons. Burt was skiing 9990 with his boots unbuckled. I didn’t realize that was possible. I sailed a lot with Skip when I lived in Portsmouth NH. It’s kind of inexcusable that I haven’t seen him since he moved to the Cape.

 

[PAabe]

I believe this is the pugski thread that was mentioned. I went to try and find it, maybe somebody can enlighten them further on the state of the east coast areas. Apparently Kirkwood and especially Steven's pass are pretty bad

Vail Resorts- a new leaf?

I learned this week that Vail is addressing some of the issues that gave rise to multiple unpaid wages lawsuits. I view this as a step in the right direction even if they are viewing many areas of "Epic Service" as unpaid "voluntary" requests. I am posting this to give credit where credit is...

www.skitalk.com

 

[eatskisleep]

So for the board, does anyone know any non-Vail resorts that ARE paying this amount to employees? I know for a fact one POWDR resort that is not and is using Vail's low-ball rates to justify their ridiculously low pay. As a result said POWDR Resort has been limping along with WAY less terrain open than usual and almost entirely new staff in many positions. In other words, since Vail delivers a shit product POWDR thinks it can too.

They really are bringing down the ski industry as a whole.

 

[chuckstah]

Last I knew Sunday River pays snow makers $20. A friend did it for a bit 2 seasons ago. Not sure of current rate.

 

[Tonyr]

This doesn’t align at all with what I’ve been hearing. My stepdaughter manages a retail store on the main drag in Vail Village close to the covered bridge and the parking structure. Her store smashed every sales record last week. Like 2x what the store has ever done in December. Her boyfriend is a waiter & bartender at a nearby high end restaurant. Same thing there. All the local businesses are paying really well to hire strong staff and they’re printing money.

Which is of course why Vail is having problems staffing the low end jobs. Anyone any good is making much better money. The customer base is spending like crazy.

We went into the candy store in the Village on Christmas Eve, the owner said it was the slowest Christmas Eve they had in 12 years of business but he did say the previous 5 or 6 days were outstanding, so that lines up. Ask them how Christmas Eve and Christmas day went as there were literally about a dozen stores in the village closed......

 

[jaytrem]

I would recommend you spend tomorrow at a Toyota dealership.

I don't know, my last 4runner only made it to 383k before I decided it was too unreliable. Then again I bet somebody is still driving it.

 

[ss20]

more money is the answer. you can talk about the perk of a 1200 dollar season pass, but if you can't afford to eat or put gas in your car then what's the point?

The expensive pass to incentivize employment worked the first 50 years of the industry's existence. This has never been an industry where you make money.

Yes, ski town prices of everything have gotten out of control. To fix that is an effort between resorts and their town governments. Should Jackson Hole pay basic hourly employees $30/hr to spin lifts because that's what it takes to afford a two bedroom apartment with a couple other dudes? I don't think so... that's not fair to the resort. At the same time, I don't think the town of Jackson should be forced to build 100s of units of affordable housing when the market demand there is for housing that's valued in the millions. That's not fair to the town. There needs to be give and take on both sides, in all ski resort communities.

The demand is just too high. Build a 1,000 unit affordable housing complex in Aspen, Jackson, Tahoe, Colorado, or Bozeman and it'd be sold-out overnight. It is a much more multi-faceted issue than just paying employees more. Pay employees 20% more you'd see rent increase 20%.

 

[abc]

Rental car. I don’t care if some parking lot attendant at Mount Snow puts a “ticket” on it. It’s not like they’re going to chase down a rental registered to a Subaru dealer in Massachusetts.

They won't be "chase down" it. They would simply sent the ticket to the register owner's address. The dealership.

The dealership is going to pay it, then charge it to you.

 

[IceEidolon]

If a company won't pay enough to entice a suitable employee to work for them, it's nobody's fault but the company's that they can't fill that position. Either the value of the labor doesn't justify the cost - and their business model is broken - or the value of the labor does justify the cost and the company could fill the position with higher pay and still be profitable.

Raising the sign on bonus by $500 (aka making the pass more expensive) is fine for one day a week part time incentives, but when your snowmakers are working seven twelves, not only do they earn that pass in one week anyway before overtime (at $12/h) but they don't give a damn about it because they're not able to use it much anyway. I've often heard ops wish they could have the cash value of their employee pass instead.

And you just cut your volume of passes sold to the general public by a lot so you have less money anyway, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[Geoff]

They won't be "chase down" it. They would simply sent the ticket to the register owner's address. The dealership.

The dealership is going to pay it, then charge it to you.

So you’re saying that on the Tuesday after a holiday week with barely enough staff to run lifts, they’re going to check every plate in their pay lots against their smartphone data base, look up plates, and send a bill to anyone not registered in the database? It’s private property. It’s not a real parking ticket. Mount Snow has no recourse beyond small claims court.

 

[snoseek]

The ones with employee housing survive. The ones with nice employee housing will thrive.

Also end of year bonuses that help workers get through the shoulder will do alot do alot to retain workers. Set aside a dollar per hour worked all season and give it back in spring because saving is hard when you make low wages.

 

[jaytrem]

So you’re saying that on the Tuesday after a holiday week with barely enough staff to run lifts, they’re going to check every plate in their pay lots against their smartphone data base, look up plates, and send a bill to anyone not registered in the database? It’s private property. It’s not a real parking ticket. Mount Snow has no recourse beyond small claims court.

Only the 2 smaller premium lots charge on weekdays, so it's not as big a job to write the tickets. I think they have plenty of staff with all the internationals. Perhaps the Snow Lake Lodge employee housing was a good draw when recruiting.

 

[Smellytele]

The expensive pass to incentivize employment worked the first 50 years of the industry's existence. This has never been an industry where you make money.

Yes, ski town prices of everything have gotten out of control. To fix that is an effort between resorts and their town governments. Should Jackson Hole pay basic hourly employees $30/hr to spin lifts because that's what it takes to afford a two bedroom apartment with a couple other dudes? I don't think so... that's not fair to the resort. At the same time, I don't think the town of Jackson should be forced to build 100s of units of affordable housing when the market demand there is for housing that's valued in the millions. That's not fair to the town. There needs to be give and take on both sides, in all ski resort communities.

The demand is just too high. Build a 1,000 unit affordable housing complex in Aspen, Jackson, Tahoe, Colorado, or Bozeman and it'd be sold-out overnight. It is a much more multi-faceted issue than just paying employees more. Pay employees 20% more you'd see rent increase 20%.

Bigger resorts need employee housing. It isn't up to the towns. If the ski companies need employees and don't want to pay them then they need to supply housing. Still need to pay them more as well.

 

[Smellytele]

Don't tempt me like that.

Doesn't take much to get me to detour a thread into Subaru bashing

Subaru has a cult following like Magic.