VAIL SUCKS

[Tonyr]

This is an expensive hobby, I wonder how much inflated prices on everything across the board has an effect on Vail's skier visits being down. Alterra is not a public company but I'd guess their numbers were down too for last season. In any event, I thought it was odd that Vail's CEO didn't bring that point up.

 

[cdskier]

EXACTLY!

This is not a fact that simply should be ignored by adding 384 "ski places" that see virtually no traffic per year.

I mean...I can think of quite a few ski areas that are NOT owned by either Vail or Alterra that see a hell of a lot more than "virtually no traffic per year".

 

[jaytrem]

So Cochran, Whaleback, and Shawnee aren't charging $285 a lift ticket due to their benevolent heart & sense of altruistic duty to mankind?

I'm not really sure you've thought this through.

I don't mind if you disagree with me, but is it really necessary to be a dick while doing it?

I didn't say why most resorts aren't trying to shock you into buying a pass. I just said most resorts aren't. Of course a big part of the reason is most of them don't have the ability to do so. No shit, you must be one of them there geniuses to have figured that out! See I can be a dick too. At any rate, it seems like you're agreeing with me, other than the fact that you disagree on the meaning of "most resorts". Those 2 words put together don't seem all that complicated, who knew??? Funny you mention Cochrans, when I took my kids there they let the 3 of us ski for $10 total, maybe they were feeling altruistic that day, or maybe they just liked my smile.

Not sure why you think the other 384 places see "virtually no traffic"? The 50% or whatever that Vail/Alterra don't control means nothing? Most of the ones I went to this year seemed to have a decent crowd, and there seems to be more of them reviving than going out of business. I'm guessing you don't ski off-pass much, so you probably wouldn't know much about that.

 

[djd66]

In New England, there are 90 resorts and 15 are on Epic and Ikon. If you don’t want to be on one of their passes, you definitely have a ton of options.

 

[thebigo]

Last three seasons I have logged a total of 306 ski days across five states and around 20 unique areas without an epic, ikon or indy pass. I have never paid >$100 for a day of skiing. Think the most was $99 for a summer ticket at timberline, most days were far less. I just play the game, buddy tickets, vouchers, off peak days, race family, etc.

 

[Tonyr]

Congrats, that is a lot of skiing over the last three seasons and not easy to do! Im guessing you had some sort of season pass for a majority of those days. 306 days over 3 seasons on Epic or Ikon comes out to about 10 dollars per day. As much as people hate Ikon and Epic It's hard to believe skiing could be any cheaper than that for those amount of days put in without some sort of pass.

 

[jaytrem]

Last three seasons I have logged a total of 306 ski days across five states and around 20 unique areas without an epic, ikon or indy pass. I have never paid >$100 for a day of skiing. Think the most was $99 for a summer ticket at timberline, most days were far less. I just play the game, buddy tickets, vouchers, off peak days, race family, etc.

Pretty crazy that you've never paid over $100 for a ticket at this point. I guess that's still a rarity for me, but not unheard of. I do buy Indy and Epic though. I think my highest ever was Sun Valley this year. Just under $200, but it didn't feel so bad since my kids skied for free.

Any chance you can list the areas? Curious which places you're able to pull that off at. Thanks!

 

[cdskier]

In New England, there are 90 resorts and 15 are on Epic and Ikon. If you don’t want to be on one of their passes, you definitely have a ton of options.

Exactly. And even some of the ones that are on Ikon are not owned by Alterra and only allow limited days. I don't think that can really count as "Alterra marketshare" since they'yre paying the partners for any days on Ikon used at those resorts. Maine and MA both have no resorts owned by Vail or Alterra and only a few partners. Expand it to the northeast and NYS alone has only 1 resort actually owned by Vail and one partner on Ikon. To say there are few ski areas that people want to visit outside of Vail/Alterra owned areas or that they have virtually no skier traffic is really stretching it...

 

[Newpylong]

If they run the lift for the Alpine Slide that means there is a chance mountain biking comes back too… hmm

Next year is their plan.

 

[Newpylong]

Last three seasons I have logged a total of 306 ski days across five states and around 20 unique areas without an epic, ikon or indy pass. I have never paid >$100 for a day of skiing. Think the most was $99 for a summer ticket at timberline, most days were far less. I just play the game, buddy tickets, vouchers, off peak days, race family, etc.

The issue is this may not be the easiest for the casual skier to figure out and it removes all aspects of spontaneity from the sport. There is no doubt things cost more (due to rising energy, labor and insurance prices chiefly) but they are not commensurate with the recent walk up rates. They want you locked in with a pass whether you go once or 100 times. Personally I am disgusted by the practice, and it isn't just a Vail thing though they certainly have led the charge.

 

[1dog]

The issue is this may not be the easiest for the casual skier to figure out and it removes all aspects of spontaneity from the sport. There is no doubt things cost more (due to rising energy, labor and insurance prices chiefly) but they are not commensurate with the recent walk up rates. They want you locked in with a pass whether you go once or 100 times. Personally I am disgusted by the practice, and it isn't just a Vail thing though they certainly have led the charge.

Its every industry- ours just happens to be expensive. Didn't Adobe start with the subscription model years ago? Now I pay for MS Office every year instead of a larger sum when the new software is released.

Predictable cash flow is king. Skiing/riding never had that before.

Read a piece in Barrons on Hims. 75% or more is recurring revenue so stock shot way up- they are those folks that proffer ' hopefully under the radar' products. . . . . Hough had a great column on it.

I've never skied cheaper- under $35 a day at 7 areas. Yet I understand why your angst is raised - no impulsive ability to just go, keeps people away if they are just 3-4 days a year, etc.

Guess we will see long term how it plays out, short term, its a private equity-like ' gimme margins NOW'.

Those aforementioned smaller areas are key to new growth. It's how most of us started.

 

[thebigo]

The issue is this may not be the easiest for the casual skier to figure out and it removes all aspects of spontaneity from the sport. There is no doubt things cost more (due to rising energy, labor and insurance prices chiefly) but they are not commensurate with the recent walk up rates. They want you locked in with a pass whether you go once or 100 times. Personally I am disgusted by the practice, and it isn't just a Vail thing though they certainly have led the charge.

Agree, the casual skier still wants to ski when weather cooperates but cannot navigate the landscape. I am known as the ski guy among family and friends, people reach out when planning their handful of ski days because they know I follow the deals and can advise on crowding and cost. I suspect families without a resident ski fanatic check the prices at the place they grew up, find themselves aghast and give up.

Vail is somewhat more complicit as the one place that requires passholders to be present to redeem buddy tickets. Passholder does not have to be present elsewhere I have used buddy tickets: ragged, gunstock, cannon, loon, sunday river, sugarloaf, sugarbush off the top of my head.

 

[doublediamond]

Vail’s Attitash summer ops is like Ferrari in F1: “Next year”

 

[AdironRider]

The issue is this may not be the easiest for the casual skier to figure out and it removes all aspects of spontaneity from the sport. There is no doubt things cost more (due to rising energy, labor and insurance prices chiefly) but they are not commensurate with the recent walk up rates. They want you locked in with a pass whether you go once or 100 times. Personally I am disgusted by the practice, and it isn't just a Vail thing though they certainly have led the charge.

Disgusted? Come on man that is pretty sensationalist.

Ski areas wanting to have some level of predictability in business levels, and thus realistically surviving long term as they can manage expense loads accordingly, is not the devil's errand.

The alternative is going back to the days of the 80's and 90's, where every bad season would put dozens of ski areas and resorts out of business, never to open again. But hey the day tickets were cheaper (but never actually cheap given inflation)!

The idea of the skier that randomly wakes up on a Saturday and decides to go skiing is not really all that common in reality. Very few families just randomly show up, and are very well trained in pre-planning these things, just like every other thing you do in modern society. If you want to be spontaneous, that costs money. At least most ski areas still let you do that. Try and get into most other venues same day and let me know how that goes. You want to go see a Red Sox / Yankees game same day with no pre-planning, you are paying out the nose if you can get in at all.

You know what else is reality, a day ticket to pretty much everything else runs equal with the cost of a day ticket to ski, if not more. Priced out a concert at an arena recently? You can't get a nosebleed seat for an act like John Mayer or Zach Bryan for less than 200. Skiing looks cheap in comparison.

This entire argument is old men yelling at clouds at this point. You aren't going to ski Vail for 25 bucks anymore and there are about 100 million more people in the country since those days. Nevermind, skier participation on the whole is up over the last decade (on average - save me the one off season stats).

 

[joshua segal]

The issue is this may not be the easiest for the casual skier to figure out and it removes all aspects of spontaneity from the sport. There is no doubt things cost more (due to rising energy, labor and insurance prices chiefly) but they are not commensurate with the recent walk up rates. They want you locked in with a pass whether you go once or 100 times. Personally I am disgusted by the practice, and it isn't just a Vail thing though they certainly have led the charge.

IMO, the practice of multi-area season passes was actually started by ASC. I suppose "ASC sucked" too, but it's not polite to speak unkindly of the dead

 

[Newpylong]

That's correct, it is nothing new. However, pricing the casual skier/rider entirely out of the game and hedging folks into a pass is the more recent trend. ASC had the right idea (to grow the sport), they just became over leveraged.

For example the peak walk up rate at Mount Snow when ASC was selling the Bronze pass was $69. The last year under Peak ownership it was still only $110. It is now nearly $200 under Vail. That number exceeds the cost of inflation and rising energy/labor. They are doing all they can for you to be Epic.

 

[snoseek]

They also did the gas station fill up discounts and that was a wicked deal for casual skiers.

 

[drjeff]

They also did the gas station fill up discounts and that was a wicked deal for casual skiers.

Heck, they also had the ASC rewards VISA card, where over the course of a year, my wife and I would often rack up enough $10 vouchers to pay for a good portion of one of our following season's passes

 

[Smellytele]

What really hurts to ski industry is cost of entry to start the sport. Yes some feeder hills have beginner deals but I personally don’t want to bring a non-skier to a feeder hill and spend the day there while they take lessons.

 

[jaytrem]

Heck, they also had the ASC rewards VISA card, where over the course of a year, my wife and I would often rack up enough $10 vouchers to pay for a good portion of one of our following season's passes

A friend ran a huge New Years party at the Grand Summit and put the whole thing on that card. The $10 vouchers that showed up looked like book. I forget what percetage the card gave for resort purchases, maybe 5%?