When will creek get it's act in gear?

[Brettski]

Intrawest use it as a tax write off

I learned there at night back in the day

I will never be back

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Why do old farts think terrain parks are just for boarders???

 

[deadheadskier]

Intrawest use it as a tax write off

I don't believe that to be true. I used to work for Intrawest and at the time (2003) Mt. Creek was their most profitable operation from a percentage of revenue stand point.

 

[Dr Skimeister]

I don't believe that to be true. I used to work for Intrawest and at the time (2003) Mt. Creek was their most profitable operation from a percentage of revenue stand point.

Wow....that surprises me.
Certainly they get the volume, but with the need for 100% snowmaking I would have guessed they had to spend a bunch of bucks to function.

Possibly their profitability is from real estate sales? Isn't that around the time (2003) that they were selling both Black Creek Santuary property and the first of the Apalachain (sp?) Hotel timeshares?

 

[Brettski]

I don't believe that to be true. I used to work for Intrawest and at the time (2003) Mt. Creek was their most profitable operation from a percentage of revenue stand point.

If you say so....afford me the opportunity not to believe that though

 

[deadheadskier]

Wow....that surprises me.
Certainly they get the volume, but with the need for 100% snowmaking I would have guessed they had to spend a bunch of bucks to function.

Possibly their profitability is from real estate sales? Isn't that around the time (2003) that they were selling both Black Creek Santuary property and the first of the Apalachain (sp?) Hotel timeshares?

The biggest factor was labor costs being extremely low. All of their other areas, labor cost was HUGE. The biggest reason is you needed to 'import' help and provide housing. The recruitment costs alone were astronomical.

At Mountain Creek, they at the time ran lean and mean with mostly high school age service employees who were paid dirt. They had no employee housing to keep up as well. There were also far fewer managers, especially in marketing compared with their other resorts.

I forget the specifics of their overall revenue, but I do remember the F&B stats. Mountain Creek did $3mil in F&B revenue and brought $1mil to the bottom line. Comparably, Snowshoe did $8mil in F&B revenue and brought only $500K to the bottom line.

As for your question concerning Real Estate. No, that didn't factor into those numbers. Intrawest has two divisions, it's operatins division and it's real estate division, Playground. The two run completely independent of one another.

Perhaps Mountain Creek is a write off for their Playground division, but in terms of Mountain Ops, it was at the time, the most profitable as a percentage of all of their areas. The GM/President of Mountain Creek was highly recognized for the work he did.

My guess is the on snow experience sucks because they really don't have to do much. Captive audience. It definitely didn't have to do with profits though. At least then. Things may have changed.

 

[ERJ-145CA]

I went to MC today for the first time this season because I had a free ticket voucher. They had almost all their trails open but it was obvious that they hadn't made snow in a while, there were a lot of brown spots and brown snow around. I skied both Vernon and Granite peaks and because of the ra*n yesterday it was frozen hardpack in the morning that was starting to soften up by the time I left. Not a bad experience considering the weather we've had lately but definitely not worth the $49 ticket price if I had to buy one. Having to take my skis off to go in the gondola 15 times is still annoying and not being able to ski South and Bear peaks sucks, but there was hardly anybody there so I got a lot of runs in and it was free.

 

[ERJ-145CA]

I passed MC on my way home from Belleayre this evening and I saw 3 people earning turns on South peak. I wonder if they allow that or if there was nobody there to see them.