VAIL SUCKS

[RichT]

I read a story

I'm in the mount snow pass holders group on Facebook, there's been multiple posts like this from several different people. I highly doubt it's fake. Not to mention there's been links posted here about vail pulling this crap at other resorts

You are not alone.............

Vail cuts employee, restaurant hours at Park City Mountain

According to employees, Park City Mountain is reducing dining hours at several on-mountain restaurants and cutting worker hours.

www.kpcw.org

 

[drjeff]

Corporate tries to improve upon last season by paying more to attract more employees which seemed to be working for the 1st half of the season in general.

The bean counters likely saw the overall employee expenses at/above last seasons total in early Feb. The bean counters flip out and make reactionary decisions to immediately scale back with still weeks left in the core part of the season.

Vail gets another round of social media deserved lambasting about their operational calls from the corporate level.

Kristin Lynch will likely come out with another mea culpa at the end of this season like she did last season when she announced the wage increases.

That seems to sum up the big picture thing here

 

[jimmywilson69]

another way for this company to piss off its workforce in the name of profits. They actually have J1s at Roundtop in PA, they seem to be working as much as previously. Its strange that they have them here as there is a seemingly endless supply of local adults and kids willing to bump lifts, etc.

I heard that Roundtop is overbudget on labor this year as well. So did they raise the wages and not raise the operating budgets? Seems like middle school math to me...

 

[snoseek]

I was always told no matter what you HAVE to work the j1's 32 hours.
Vail has this funny way of passing off any sort of risk to either the customer or employee.

 

[Kingslug20]

If the contract states they have to be paid 32 hours..then that's it.
Without knowing specifics..then who knows.

 

[Edd]

Call me naive, but aren’t the F&B situations profitable endeavors overall? I’m missing something.

 

[snoseek]

Call me naive, but aren’t the F&B situations profitable endeavors overall? I’m missing something.

At eight bucks or so a pop I cant for the life of me figure out how they dont have a bar open MON, Tues at Wildcat and down the street at Attitash they have 2 bars open.

 

[Edd]

At eight bucks or so a pop I cant for the life of me figure out how they dont have a bar open MON, Tues at Wildcat and down the street at Attitash they have 2 bars open.

Talking about this exact thing with my ski buddies right now. Can’t make sense of it.

 

[catskillman]

From the Mount Snow passholders group…

Good evening! With the permission of the administrator and the members of the group, I come to tell you a little bit about the situation in the mountain, where I have been working as J1 for 3 seasons and it makes me sad to see how they are sending everything down the toilet. Just to put you guys in context, most if not all of us J1 are students in our countries of origin either (Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, etc). That we paid a very large sum of money approximately 3 thousand dollars to be able to live this experience of "Work and Travel". Now if I tell you what is happening, this all started at the end of January, where we are informed (for no apparent reason) that they will be cutting hours and laying off staff. At the beginning of February they confirm that they will close the Iron Loft Restaurant (for all this I work in Carinthia). So it affected us a lot when it closed as they moved all the people upstairs to Cafeteria Carinthia, although we had already been informed, the whole situation itself seemed very strange to us as we received a large number of tourists and locals who they came to ski and the snow conditions were good compared to the previous season. After all this, a wave of unfair dismissals began to unleash more towards J1, we soon found out that this was all over the mountain and that they also began to cut hours in all departments (F&B, Lifts operations, rentals, housekeeping, etc). But our F&B department was the most affected. Another thing we found out later was that they had laid off all the snow makers team. But this was just the tip of the iceberg, they held a meeting again where they informed us that we would no longer have breakfast for the guests and that the cafeterias would only open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. which was crazy since these are the times when we receive the most people, we had to stop several guests trying to grab food for this reason. And the craziest thing of all is that no one shows their faces and comes out to explain what is really happening. This is a business that, seeing how far it is from making losses, makes a lot of profits (I mean, you saw the prices). I am very sorry that this season has ended in this way, I have friends, very nice people that I met here who are returning to their country or are looking for a place to work more than 10 hours (which is what they are giving us in the mountain) I have friends that not even the rent of their house can pay for what they choose to return to their countries.

Last year at hunter they sent most of them home early. There really are not that many here this year

 

[trackbiker]

Call me naive, but aren’t the F&B situations profitable endeavors overall? I’m missing something.

From my experience, a lot bean counters only look at costs. "You have to cut costs!" They never understand that sometimes you have to spend a nickel to make a dime.

 

[drjeff]

Call me naive, but aren’t the F&B situations profitable endeavors overall? I’m missing something.

Anectodtally, from the times the last few weeks I have been in various F&B establishments at Mount Snow, the volume of customers in them has seemed fairly "normal" and heck a couple of Saturday's ago, the line to get something from the grill in the main base lodge cafeteria around 12:30 was longer than I have ever seen it before, to the point where it was all the way back out of the entrance to the cafeteria and snaking down through the seating area towards Cuzzins

The demand sure seems like its there. Not exactly the image I am guessing they want, especially as we get into the time of year when they'll be rolling out next seasons Epic Pass pricing and folks will be making the choice to buy/renew one or not. Intuitively you'd think the bean counters in CO would understand that this is the time of the season to put their best foot forward as a way to drive next years pass sales, rather than leave a "non Epic experience" impression just prior to the marketing blitz for the '23-'24 season Epic

 

[snoseek]

Just wait till the next recession and everyone is packing lunches and drinking in the parking lots. Consider this training.

 

[Smellytele]

Just wait till the next recession and everyone is packing lunches and drinking in the parking lots. Consider this training.

I grill and drink in the parking lot now and have since forever. Bought a nice 360 deg propane heater that mounts right onto a 20lb tank.

 

[MikeDeJ]

It’s brilliant management. To save money cut the staff and limit the available choices or no choices at all. Which will lead to less money coming in, so further reduce staff. Which just spirals you down. Beyond stupid. You have a captive audience who will buy overpriced food!! This is why accountants can’t run service businesses unchecked.

 

[MikeDeJ]

I think Their stock price will take a hit for this. There F&B was down 4or5% last season and they said they would strive to improve this this season. Now that things are back to a sort of normal post COVID the sales may have been up, but now that they are not selling anything there is no way sales will be up? I was at the Bullwheel at MS yesterday no food downstairs and only pretzels and cheese platters available upstairs? No way to make sales plan?

 

[BodeMiller1]

This whole thread is kind of like what happened at Fenway Park.

There used to be a couple of street venders on the street right outside of Fenway. There was sausage guy and peanut guy. I used to get peanuts to walk around before the game. If I recall the guy would roast the peanuts right on his cart. Sausage guy would cook his stuff... The smell would sell both.

Then the Red Sox saw these guys were making money and the Grinch said "This can not stand". So The Red Sox bought the rights to the streets and started hitting up the fans before they got into the park.

Vail = Red Sox

Sausage = Snow

Peanuts = Transport (chairs)

So the question remains do the Red Sox suck? At this point we we don't know.

Meow

 

[gittist]

I went to Jack Frost yesterday (Mar 1). What trails they had open were pretty decent considering it's been spring skiing since the beginning of January.

What's got me is each time I've been there they have at least two people zapping you with the 'pass guns' at each lift plus sometimes someone is walking around up top zapping. A few times there were three people with guns at the empty lift just shooting the bull.

I can understand a couple of zappers er lift on a weekend but I don't on a weekday when the lift lines might be two people deep?? I suspect they're spending a dollar to save a dime. We'll pay for it in the end.

 

[trackbiker]

I went to Jack Frost yesterday (Mar 1). What trails they had open were pretty decent considering it's been spring skiing since the beginning of January.

What's got me is each time I've been there they have at least two people zapping you with the 'pass guns' at each lift plus sometimes someone is walking around up top zapping. A fw times there were three peole with guns at the empty lift just shooting the bull.

I can understand a couple of zappers er lift on a weekend but I don't on a weekday when the lift lines might be two people deep?? I suspect they're spending a dollar to save a dime. We'll pay for it in the end.

Might be the J1's that they have to guarantee 32 hrs a week to? Maybe the GM at Jack Frost didn't get the memo that he was supposed to lay them off.

 

[BodeMiller1]

I went to Jack Frost yesterday (Mar 1). What trails they had open were pretty decent considering it's been spring skiing since the beginning of January.

What's got me is each time I've been there they have at least two people zapping you with the 'pass guns' at each lift plus sometimes someone is walking around up top zapping. A few times there were three people with guns at the empty lift just shooting the bull.

I can understand a couple of zappers er lift on a weekend but I don't on a weekday when the lift lines might be two people deep?? I suspect they're spending a dollar to save a dime. We'll pay for it in the end.

When I get out of jail I get checked once.

 

[BodeMiller1]

Jack Frost is a great ski shop. Over the years I've bought stuff I forget like gloves, had skis tuned. Nice people good prices. Dog friendly. Never, ever thought they were trying to over sell me. They know their stuff.