VAIL SUCKS

[thetrailboss]

Washington Attorney General Wants To Know If You Have Complaints About Stevens Pass

Do you have a complaint about Stevens Pass Ski Resort...Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson wants to hear from you. King5 reports Ferguson's office

unofficialnetworks.com

 

[Geoff]

I think you are exactly right. Vail has two categories.

1. The cash cow acquisitions
2. The market defense acquisitions

New Hampshire and I suspect many of the mid Atlantic properties were market defense acquisitions. They have no interest in really growing the business at those areas. They just win by not having people buy passes elsewhere. Attitash is a perfect example. It had one of the busiest summer businesses of any ski area in the East. They all but mothballed the place last summer.

I'd be livid if I lived in areas in the Mid Atlantic that basically are a Vail monopoly. At least in NH we have options. The Wildcat skiers will move over to Cannon; the Attitash skiers head over to Bretton Woods or Cranmore; Sunapee skiers to Ragged, Loon or Gunstock and Crotched skiers Pats.

Nyberg killed the summer business at Killington. He had a contractual obligation to run a lift with the lease on the land but it was otherwise tumbleweeds. It really hurt all the businesses in town. In the case of Vail, it’s kind of ironic. At the moment, they’re really busy in the summer. My stepdaughter manages a business in the village. They had a very good summer and fall. I’m a salt water guy but northern New England does way more summer tourist business than winter ski business. The ubiquitous “This car climbed Mount Washington” bumper sticker.

 

[Bostonian]

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong on this.

Is it also fair to say that in some instances, the Vaxx mandate has made the work force supply tighter for some hospitals, which is also having an affect on the number of beds available for those who are sick enough to require hospitalization?

And one can certainly make the case that based on what those choosing to not comply with the Vaxx mandate often say, they had Covid in the past (potentially even acquired while they were working early on in the pandemic) and as such as the science seems to show, have just as much, if not more immunity (depending on who's studies you're reading) to Covid than someone who may have just been vaxxed and not had Covid?

Ultimately with the healthcare facilities and the mandate status it's all tied to federal healthcare dollars coming into the facilities, and the federal government telling those facilities that if their employees aren't vaxxed, the Federal Government won't be sending the checks to the healthcare facilities for treatment on people who have federally sponsored health insurance plans

There are many peices of this puzzle that just don't make much logical sense these days from multiple viewpoints on the topic.

As for how the Vaxx mandate had affected Vail (to try and pivot somewhat back on topic), It seems that it has affected certain jobs more than others, and those jobs, while maybe not the greatest numbers in terms of total employees, are often of very high significance for day to day resort operations. Add in the tight available employee market now (again for NUMEROUS reasons) and you help create the situation that Vail is in, and maybe on the back side of this, from a management standpoint, they will need to seriously think about how they're compensating some of their employees, since while aside from their hourly rate, they do have some decent benefits for employees, which may not be quite as attractive for some as seeing more in their hourly rate. Heck, I know in my own business, that as the owner, I see how much extra $$ the benefits paid to my employees add up to (and will remind them of that) , but often it seems as if paying the equivalent extra per hour that the benfits add up to over the course of a year, might be more appreciated than the benefits themself.

Going to try to respond paragraph by paragraph:

Speaking specifically for Mass General Brigham, where I worked up until November before accepting a job outside the system, they terminated 458 employees out of 80,000, which is .5% of the entire workforce. The vax mandate didn’t have an impact on the workforce shortage. This has been reported in the Boston Business Journal and other reputable sources. In fact before accepting the position I currently am in, I was working with my staff to get them vaccinated to ensure there wasn’t any lapses. Furthermore I also did this with the flu vaccine, which is mandated too.

As for having Covid in the past, it has been documented by NIH funded studies, that the level immunity is not as robust as receiving the vaccines. There is a false sense of security swirling around those who previously contracted COVID thinking their immune to it. That isn’t the case as colleagues have seen the same patients who were not vaccinated multiple times for separate Covid infections. There is no reputable board certified study that states that Covid immunity by catching it is more robust than being vaccinated.

Hospitals make their money through elective surgery. The federal money that flows in is for research (the area I was working in), which can support physicians salaries - however, only for the work they conduct directly with the research funds. Elective surgery, which is not “optional” surgery, accounts for approximately $48-64 billion of net income to hospitals. This is paid through private insurers, which accounts for 66% of all coverage nationally. Take away elective surgery, you remove the cash cow that hospitals use to generate net income.

We can pivot back to vail; however, again based off of national trend numbers for employment, Vail’s poor HR process (the app for hiring and etc), and the lack of a fair wage impacts them greater than just a vax policy. The thing businesses love to cut down are on the fringe benefit costs.

Ultimately Vail’s poor management, lack of capital investment (in NH - see Attitash), lack of HR support, and budget trimming actions (shorter seasons/snow making) have impacted the product. I agree you cannot run an eastern ski area as you would out in Colorado. However, the vaccine talk is a red herring argument.

 

[2Planker]

I don't get the "Vail requires employees to be vaxxed so that's why they're down on staff" argument. Powdr resorts also require vax and they're hurting but not as bad as Vail. Same with the few Alterra resorts I spot checked.

Vail just sucks to work for. Period. In an industry that overall sucks to work in, they suck the hardest. No one...and I mean literally no one I've talked to... has enjoyed their time working under Vail. My favorite story is an instructor who taught at Okemo. He taught part-time and worked in the airline industry part-time. At first he loved it since he got an Epic pass for free and then could fly wherever he wanted for cheap/free. He literally had the perfect setup. I believe he lasted two seasons of Vail-owned Okemo. He had been there maybe 7ish years total. He said class sizes doubled and they'd no longer give out assistants to large kids classes... and working for less pay...

I've been working as a Patroller since 1982. 6 different places in VT, NH & ME, all well known resorts....
Never in my life have I seen such utter incompetence. GM who knows absolutely nothing about Liability and Risk Management.
Minimal training, No annual recerts.
Rag Tag fixes held together w/ Duct Tape - Not kidding here
Staff Retention of less than 25% from last year. - YIKES

It was very hard for me to walk away after 40 years, BUT I didn't want to be a part of an organization that cares so little about it employees.
It wasn't about the $$$, I work 30-40 days for only my pass. Comes out to about $15 for a 10 hour day

 

[Great Bear]

Not vail specific but I wonder if this ultra-cheap pass pricing model also affects employment at the mountains? When passes were higher priced, I imagine they were a pretty big perk to an employee. Now you can buy an Epic base or Ikon base pass for something like $600 if you buy early bird, so that component is much less of an incentive.

 

[ss20]

Not vail specific but I wonder if this ultra-cheap pass pricing model also affects employment at the mountains? When passes were higher priced, I imagine they were a pretty big perk to an employee. Now you can buy an Epic base or Ikon base pass for something like $600 if you buy early bird, so that component is much less of an incentive.

Yes, this is a key issue a lot of people seem to forget.

My post from September, 2021 on ski area staffing-

It's been talked about ad nauseum here already... but higher wages and cheaper housing is only half the solution (if that). Raise wages and higher housing costs will follow. Destination resorts packing 4-8 employees sharing bedrooms in 1000sq ft condos also isn't conducive to long-term employment. The resorts can help by raising wages and adding employee housing, but there's other factors.

First, the cheap season pass. There's no point in working at a ski area part-time if the pass price is only a few hundred $$$. Back in the 00s when a season pass to a destination mountain was easily $1,000+, it made financial sense to work for the ski resort and get that expensive pass for free. Now you're better off bussing tables, tending bar, or doing whatever else in the resort town and dropping $500 to buy the season pass yourself. In most places you'll get paid better and you can ski during the day and work at night.

Second, the mentality that it's not OK to be a ski bum. The industry has always targeted young college or post-college kids to come to destination resorts and ski bum for a couple years after earning their degree. That was much more accessible/reasonable 15 years ago than today. If I graduated school with $50...$100...$150k in student loans I'm not going to "ski bum" for a season...I'm jumping right into my field to make money and start the monstrous task of paying off that debt. Also, for kids in college, college passes are stupid cheap. Excuse me, that's incorrect. Most pass prices for adults are "stupid cheap". College passes are "7 digit IQ" stupid cheap. I'm a Killington skier and before Vail bought Okemo you could ski Okemo, Killington, Pico, and Sunapee on a college pass, unlimited, for something like $450. Now with just K/Pico it's even cheaper. Why would you have kids attending college working at the resorts on weekends when the pass price is so cheap?

Last...and I wouldn't say this is an "issue" but something the resorts can work on....industry perks. I had no idea how many benefits there were to those in the industry til I joined. It's insane. I'm not saying this has to be advertised on banner ads on ski resort websites, but if more people knew how cheap you can ski just by working part-time I'd bet many more would work at the resorts.


And also to be fair, the industry has not kept up with the times. It's done nothing to erase it's reputation of shitty pay and long hours. For those who haven't seen my "Personal Good News" thread, I'm moving to Utah to continue to teach skiing full-time out there. I talked to several destination, world-class resorts. At one of them the recruiter and I set up 3 separate meeting times to have a second interview over the course of a month and he missed every single meeting (this was in June/July....I got an email 3 weeks ago asking if I was still interested). Another mountain I talked to wanted to give me less money as a salaried ski school supervisor. The salary was less money than I would've made teaching (without tips). I'm a Level 1 PSIA member.... not a level 3 with 30 years of teaching experience... and the instructor pay still would've been more.

So it's a ton of issues. People who just say "oh build more affordable housing" or "pay lifties $25/hr" are not seeing the whole picture.

 

[pinion]

Not sure if this group is ready to hear this, but per Wildcat's web cam... they are blowing snow...

 

[2Planker]

Not sure if this group is ready to hear this, but per Wildcat's web cam... they are blowing snow...

Must have hired a couple guys..... ZERO snowmaking over the last 2 weeks w/ plenty of opportunities.

Will give my business to BW tmrw and Shawnee/SR on Sunday

 

[icecoast1]

Yet, Crotched and Sunapee have blown snow... So there goes your theory. Perhaps, it is more to do with Vail's inflexibility of providing a living wage. Where I work, we have a vax mandate and only lost less than 1% of our workforce who refused to follow science.

When you are already drastically shortstaffed to begin with, you can't afford to lose 1 percent of your staff, especially if it's in critical departments

 

[Mainer]

I was starting to think wildcat wasn’t going to blow anymore snow this year. Must have borrowed snowmakers from another resort. They are close to having 2 top to bottom snowmaking runs for February. Way to get after it.

 

[icecoast1]

If your snowmaking crew gets stay-at-home ordered - or worse, all get sick - mid season, you're up shit creek. Same with snowcat operators if you have two shifts or swap cats or share a break/locker room. It is absolutely a risk, even moreso if you have a bunch of rookies and one senior guy to run the pumps and compressors and valves - lose that senior guy and you're sunk for seven days (or at best gutting one shift to cover the missing shift.)

Unvaccinated employees are absolutely a bigger risk because they're more likely to get sick, more likely to transmit the virus, more likely not to have been masking/being generally responsible and so transmitted it to more staff, more likely to be out long term, more likely to be hospitalized. Requiring vaccinations is one of the very few things Vail's done right.

The Mandate worked really well for Killington who lost 80 +employees a week or two ago. Omicron is getting you weather you're vaccinated or not.

 

[icecoast1]

I was starting to think wildcat wasn’t going to blow anymore snow this year. Must have borrowed snowmakers from another resort. They are close to having 2 top to bottom snowmaking runs for February. Way to get after it.

With their major resorts being about done, maybe they are borrowing staff from other resorts?

 

[machski]

I am surprised that nobody has complained that Vail has too much control of the NH market. The DOJ threatened action with ASC for owning Waterville Valley, Attitash, and Cranmore. Vail now controls Attitash, Sunapee, Crotched, and Wildcat. I would think that this is a significant amount of NH's total skier days.

Well, on the ASC front, I think you have to take their entire Northeast presence into account back then. Beyond the 4 NH's, they had SR, SL, SB, K/Pico and Mount Snow. That is a huge fraction of the New England skier visits back then and NO ONE came close back then. Flash ahead to today, Vail competes against Alterra with 2 owned resorts in VT and 4 other partners across VT/NH/ME, which include the largest skier visit areas in each state. Plus, Boyne is very strong in ME/NH, now owning 4 resorts, 3 of which tie onto Ikon. Not the same dynamic. I am still shocked ASC only had to shed Cranmore and WV back then to satisfy DOJ, they were the smallest skier visit resorts in the eastern portfolio back then.

As to Vail, their resorts in VT are all in the top 6 of most visited resorts in state. Since a lot of draw is off the NYC area plus Boston, much of those visits are overnight types. Their NH owned properties have a much larger fraction of pure day trippers and really only draw off Boston metro. It appears they are following the money trail for now anyway.

 

[xlr8r]

Well, on the ASC front, I think you have to take their entire Northeast presence into account back then. Beyond the 4 NH's, they had SR, SL, SB, K/Pico and Mount Snow. That is a huge fraction of the New England skier visits back then and NO ONE came close back then. Flash ahead to today, Vail competes against Alterra with 2 owned resorts in VT and 4 other partners across VT/NH/ME, which include the largest skier visit areas in each state. Plus, Boyne is very strong in ME/NH, now owning 4 resorts, 3 of which tie onto Ikon. Not the same dynamic. I am still shocked ASC only had to shed Cranmore and WV back then to satisfy DOJ, they were the smallest skier visit resorts in the eastern portfolio back then.

As to Vail, their resorts in VT are all in the top 6 of most visited resorts in state. Since a lot of draw is off the NYC area plus Boston, much of those visits are overnight types. Their NH owned properties have a much larger fraction of pure day trippers and really only draw off Boston metro. It appears they are following the money trail for now anyway.

Waterville had a lot more skier visits than Attitash back in those days. Back then Waterville was a clear top 2 resort in NH with Loon. Attitash had only developed half of Bear Peak at that point. I bet the Grand Summit under construction at the time and other developable real estate is why ASC kept Attitash over Waterville. Or Les just wanted to hold onto Attitash because it was the second resort he owned after Sunday River.

 

[ericfromMA/NH/VT]

Have to call or email them:

https://epicpass.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4411068445723-Can-I-opt-out-of-Auto-Renew-

Good luck and document your emails in case they 'forget' and charge you again.

Thanks! As I suspected they were NOT set to auto renew.

But, no one can send me an email confirming that and you cant change in your acct online...sooooooo shady.

I can only get an email confirming non-renew status by emailing corporate and asking for one.

Its times like these I'm glad I'm an attorney whose best friend from college is a lawyer in Colorado...because under the agreement we all accepted all disputes are handled in Colorado, applying Colorado law.

I will update when I get the email from corporate.

 

[ericfromMA/NH/VT]

I am surprised that nobody has complained that Vail has too much control of the NH market. The DOJ threatened action with ASC for owning Waterville Valley, Attitash, and Cranmore. Vail now controls Attitash, Sunapee, Crotched, and Wildcat. I would think that this is a significant amount of NH's total skier days.

it is weird because the governor's family owns Waterville Valley and those cheap epic passes must have kept some folks from buying that $1000 adult season tix that comes with a free child pass.

I know because was one of those people.

 

[ericfromMA/NH/VT]

Funny story, I was at Okemo yesterday and asked for a couple little Okemo helmet stickers for my kids, the ones you usually get for free everywhere.

The woman came back and said they didn't have any Okemo stickers but had an "epic" sticker I could put on my truck and offered me that.

I was very polite because I don't give people doing their jobs a hard time. I just kind of chuckled and politely said "no thanks, no offense but I don't want to advertise for Vail".

The woman looked me dead in the eye and said " no worries we totally understand" and chuckled a little bit herself.

She was very nice and helped me find another thing I needed but that exchange told me the passholders aren't the only ones that dislike Vail.

 

[kendo]

Thanks! As I suspected they were NOT set to auto renew.

But, no one can send me an email confirming that and you cant change in your acct online...sooooooo shady.

I can only get an email confirming non-renew status by emailing corporate and asking for one.

Its times like these I'm glad I'm an attorney whose best friend from college is a lawyer in Colorado...because under the agreement we all accepted all disputes are handled in Colorado, applying Colorado law.

I will update when I get the email from corporate.

No worries. You can confirm online if your account is set to Auto Renew (or if you declined Auto Renew) when you last ordered, by following these steps:

PSA - How to cancel your EPIC Pass auto renewal

If you selected auto-renew on your Epic Pass and you want to opt out for 22/23, you have to call or email to cancel. There's no easy option to cancel within your Epic account. Document your communications with Epic as there will likely be snafu's, and not in your favor. Update 3/21/22...

forums.alpinezone.com

 

[ericfromMA/NH/VT]

I was just unsuccessfully trolling the thread to get it off the vaccine topic. I lived in Portsmouth for a decade and worked in the NH border towns for 20 years. My first turns at age 6 in lace boots and cable bindings were at Cranmore. I understand the New Hampshire value proposition. Personally, I don’t think Vail cares about North Conway so the two ski areas are under a “don’t lose too much money this year” edict. As a business, Vail cares about $ per day skier yield. They don’t see a penny from North Conway lodging. The customer base isn’t spending big on-mountain.

QUIET!!! they'll buy North Conway next!!!!

 

[thetrailboss]

Update: https://denver.cbslocal.com/2022/01...ng-vail-resorts-hire-more-workers-pay-better/