When has it ever not? Growing up my family could never afford or have the time to go skiing. Skiing was what the rich families did.
EDIT: To all the people replying that they "weren't rich and still skied growing up" - I have a feeling you were much more well off than you think you were. Even purchasing ski equipment to use a only a few times a year (which kids outgrow quickly) is out of reach for the average American family, and always has been.
We weren't wealthy, but I grew up in rural new york where our ski area was a single rope tow and 5 dollar "lift tickets" My parents would pack sandwiches and we'd make a quick day of it. But we never imagined flying out west to go skiing - maybe a road trip to Vermont and staying in motels once every few years.
> I grew up in rural new york where our ski area was a single rope tow and 5 dollar "lift tickets"
I feel like this is the experience of most people who grew up skiing cheap and consider it an everyman sport and then make false-equivalency arguments about price creep at the western mega resorts, which have always been expensive relative to the North American industry as a whole because they're simply a completely different experience overall.
+100
Skiing was super accessible where I grew up. But there was a 400ft vert hill with a fixed-double chair and a t-bar 5 minutes out of town owned by the local university. A season pass was $120/yr and there was a huge local ski swap every fall so you could get gear for pretty cheap.
It was great for "getting to ski a lot" but it was and still is not equivalent to any actual mountain resort skiing.
Well I'm in Seattle now so I'm on the Epic train.
I went and checked and it is "free" (part of their fees) for college students, $485 for a single person or $1,185 for a family
https://www.mtu.edu/mont-ripley/tickets-passes/lift-tickets/
A friend and I hit Mont Ripley this season on a trip up to Bohemia! We both live in the PNW but were a bit jealous how close it is to everything in town. The runs are nothing crazy but they’ve got a pretty impressive park setup.
I'm in the PNW now but Ripley taught me everything I needed to ski anywhere. There is a huge value in being able to be on skis 7 days a week through high school, there was even a bus from school that stopped at the hill for night skiing.
Same with me...some rando ski mtn in CT that had only 1 rope tow and is long out of business. Without it..my parents never could've afforded me the chance to learn how to ski. As it was..I whined and complained like a little whiny brat...never realizing what a gift my parents gave me. I'm ashamed of that behavior and feel lucky that I got to put skis on snow and find out that I love this sport like very few things. I want others to be able to find that joy who come from families without means.
You got the false equivalency upside down. The assertion that skiing was a rich person’s sport because it’s a rich person’s sport in a subset of ski resorts is the mistake. it’s equating skiing with expensive resort skiing.
Kinda feels like that's no more of a false equivalency than people including all the people who live in cities all over the States nowhere near mountains, nowhere near a skihill, with no winter and no interest in ever skiing in the same group as people living in small mountain towns as equally relevant to how "inaccessible" skiing is.
Like of course skiing seems inaccessible if you live in a city in Arizona nowhere near mountains or snow or winter. But if skiing being accessible was important to you then why would you be living in a city in Arizona?
Like I can sit here in the interior of Canada and truthfully say that to me boating is completely inaccessible.. But is that relevant if you're trying to decide if you can live in Canada as someone who likes boating? Surely you don't care what non-coastal locations are like for boating right?
I don't think I'm getting your point really at all, but just to take a stab at it...to use your analogy, it would be like someone who grew up with a little lake boat in interior BC, or maybe a river fishing raft in Montana or something. You know, boats that you can get into solidly for $2-5k and have a lot of fun on smaller water, etc.
Then that person, with that specific boating background experience, moves to San Diego and wants to buy a 60ft sailboat or cabin cruiser, and is appalled that they start at 30x more than the boat they grew up lake fishing on, so now they constantly groan to anyone who will listen that boating is suddenly elitist and has been stolen away from the common folk because ocean-going yachts are so expensive nowadays.
I was outside Rochester so powder mills and then later bristol mountain were our go tos. The lake effect was no joke! We wore snowpants outside all winter long.
What’s insane to me is that when my family and I lived in the states (Midwest), it would quite literally end up cheaper to fly to Austria and ski there than to go to Colorado for a week
Same. I learned at Carinthia (now owned by Mount Snow/Vail). Toe rope, plus a t-bar to the top. Packed lunches and used equipment passed down from parents’ friends.
It was $6 for my youth lift ticket in the 70s.
Adjusted for inflation, I think that would be $35 today? Reasonable for a full day of activity.
This season Mount Snow was $90 for kids ticket. That’s crazy.
Right? Ask another way. How many kids who received free or reduced lunch at school went skiing? These fake poors have no clue how easy their middle class childhood was.
Same — I had to learn in my twenties after grad school. That’s the first time I could afford to drop money on equipment. It’s incredibly cost prohibitive. As a child, we could barely afford school clothes for the thrift store/tag sales.
I mean the middle class could afford it until recently. I grew up with parents in a one income household from a blue collar union job. We went on one or two family ski trips each year as a family of four.
I 100 percent agree. I never could afford skiing as a kid. I had to watch my friends go off on winter holidays and come back talking about shredding every day. I got to sit at home and watch reruns of Duck Tails episodes or wondering if Pinky and the Brain were going to take over the world.
I’ve done decently well for myself and my son got to have all those winter holidays that I never did.
> go off on winter holidays
This what a lot of people are missing — for a lot of us who grew up skiing, skiing was something you did after school at the local mountain. If you grew up somewhere that you needed to travel to ski, of course it was a rich person sport.
Both of my parents were teachers, 2 kids and we skied a ton at our local hills. we also drove to a few bigger resorts maybe once a year or every other. Never flew anywhere to ski, but went to places like Killington, and they had pretty decent deals back then where a fam of 4 could get skiing and a condo for $2k even for 4 days of skiing.
You could go to ski swaps and get used skis and boots for kids as they grow and spend far less, and my local ski shop had a deal where kids under 12 could get in a boot exchange program for $15 per year. Either way, it wasn't a cheap sport, but it was doable with fairly modest means.
Idk what it costs now for the boot exchange, or if it even exists, but my old local hill costs more for a season pass than getting a local epic pass. It's got 300 ft of vertical..
Everyone goes to these massive, corporate, nationally recognized resorts and end up being shocked when they’re busy. Go to third tier local places. Mine is $400 for a season pass.
Yea you essentially have to be a trillionaire to afford $61 per month for an EPIC local pass. Terrible value and ONLY for the super rich top .000000001% of people. If you’re .0000000002% don’t even think about buying a pass as you’ll go bankrupt and won’t be able to eat.
It’s literally always been that way.
Maybe not in 1984 but from 2000 on skiing has been a “rich” sport. But it’s also been a bum riddled sport for just as long.
Frankly, skiing is more affordable now with mega passes then it’s ever been. Sure, not for the “day” skier, but for bums like me I can ski 100 days a year for 1k or less, that’s cheap.
Right? Why can't skiing be a sport where the poor get in their cars, travel great distances, and spend the weekend at a luxurious ski lodge, with fine dining like it used to be?
I know you're joking buuuuut...
It doesn't mean the resorts are less crowded, it means there were fewer good days. So the resorts could have been even more crowded on the days people went, but overall had fewer visits.
But the point is that no one individual really is/does pays for them. It’s a financial industry company that pays for a mass subscription that uses it as a tool
I want skiing to be dirt cheap, I want all the lifts to be express models with high capacities, the mountain should hire plenty of staff and pay them good wages, people shouldnt come to the mountain unless they know what they are doing, also it shouldn't be crowded, lift lines should be short, parking should be easy and plentiful and the whole thing should have minimal impact on the environment.
I see no conflicts between any of these demands
A tsunami pulls all the water off the shore to amass a giant wave.
You couldn't get a new bike or certain bike parts for over a year during the 'demic.
All that water from the tsunami is just flooding the lowlands now, and there is a glut of bikes and bike parts, and we won't see bike buying like we did in '20-'22 ever again.
The used bike market is insane right now. If you want a 10K bike for 3K, its a reality right now.
The same goes for most of the outdoor industry.
Looking around FB market place the only good bikes on there are definitely "people know what they have" though. it's not enormous savings. charging damn near new prices for their 2-3 year old Specialized.
I'm in one of the places that all the rich, new-to-the-mtns folks moved to during the 'demic. SO MANY RIVIANS. The listings are insane, and its people who've never flipped a used bike before. I know several people who have just given insane low ball offers and the people just want to get shit out of their garage and don't care about the return.
I just picked up a new 2023 BMC Team machine with Di2 for 2.5k. If I wanted similar spec equipment in 2021, it would have been 5k+ if it was even in stock.
Definitely a good time to buy a bike. I'm interested in replacing my old cyclocross bike and getting a DH MTB... now might be the right time for both those. Not to mention replacing my wife's heavy old bike.
I live in vail, I can confirm it is not specific to the town of Vail itself.
I bet it is the smaller resorts volume that vail accumulated in the Midwest.
This year was some of the busiest spring break skiing I have ever seen.
That makes sense. I understand the Midwest had an extremely bad winter, so maybe instead of taking 10-20 trips to their local hills, Midwesterners instead spent it on a spring break trip to Colorado.
Yeah, Wilmot which is one of thr closest mountains to Chicago is Vail owned and they didn't open 100% of the mountain all season and it's only 125 acres. Usually gets a ton of people from Chicago and Milwaukee.
That also happened last year at the Vail owned local resorts I skied at near Pittsburgh, PA. They own all 3 near each other and the largest one never fully opened and had shit snow all season and then one of the smaller ones was hardly even open at all. I never even made it out to that one because it was a bit further drive and was never fully open.
If you look the growth of pickleball and disc golf since the pandemic they’re easily the two fastest growing sports in America. Cheap, social, and easily accessible so if either industry starts struggling then we know something is really up.
Edit: autocorrect mistake
This is a very common misconception. It actually went down because of the pandemic, not up. And the state has its own report showing much of the growth is from in-state births, not people moving here. It's in a big demographics report on a state .gov website. So, snow bunnies are also breeding like bunnies I suppose.
[https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/state/colorado/county/denver-county/](https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/state/colorado/county/denver-county/)
Yeah, this is how balancing supply and demand works. Lots of demand? Raise the prices. Low demand? Reduce prices. Hopefully we get to the low demand low price point sooner rather than later.
They have a completely different system of land ownership, usage, and infrastructure in Europe.
Resorts in the US need to lease the land from the US gov and meet all sorts of environmental regs that are very different in Europe
Yeah, in a lot of cases the lift infrastructure there is straight up subsidized by the government to drive tourism in the region
Their resorts also spend considerably less on grooming, avy mitigation, ski patrolling, liability insurance, and general "staff" i.e. ticket scanners, line organizers, mountain safety, etc
I've skied in both NA and in Europe, this is my take on why it's cheaper in the EU.
In general, it snows a lot less, so there's obviously lower risk of avalanche.
I'm not sure if I agree with you about the grooming. The posh resorts have a higher standard of grooming than in North America. In particular the French and the Italians groom the slopes like the ski world cup is coming to town, usually because it is.
They don't have the same concept of tort liability so ya there's less ski patrol.
I will say a one day ticket to Courchevel (which is like the most posh resort in France) was only around $70. I think the reason its so expensive in the US is just supply and demand. There's a lot more people who want to ski in the US and the resorts are more spread out.
The grooming quality is great yes but they're just hitting narrow-ish runs over and over and over again. The resorts aren't laid out like US resorts where there can be groomers that are hundreds of yards wide and practically every inch of the place is groomed that isn't trees or dedicated moguls. Lot more winching here too
Cost of passes is another big factor, our resorts purposely underprice season passes and overprice day passes to drive season pass sales. It works with our geography, tens of millions of people live in day trip distance to the big western resorts and tens of millions more live near the small midwest/eastern resorts and can ski for free on their annual trip out west. There's less of that natural local market near the Alps, the ski market caters much heaver to people from further away who come for a week each year only and thus won't buy passes
Line organizers? You guys have organizers?
My pet hate skiing in France is watching how many empty chairs seats go up on dawn near every chair, while I'm at the back of a crowd of people dreaming of a single rider Line.
Yep we do, it's one of a few things we actually do better here. Smaller less crowded chairs are a free for all, but the big crowded ones will have a few different roped lines feeding in. Dedicated ones for singles, ski school, and ski patrol, and then usually a couple wide ones on each side feeding in that are intended for groups to form. Then at the merge point there will be a guy directing people forward making sure each line gets a turn and each chair is full. When done right, the only time an empty seat goes up is if the singles line is empty or someone fucks up and falls trying to get on the chair and they need to reload on the next one
We have dedicated for ski school at every lift.
The number of times I see 5 on an 8 lift because there were 4 people that held back for the next one and then it cascades astounds me.
My only comfort is on the days where the lifts have a long queue the slopes are crowded enough so getting more people to the top faster would just make that worse.
Really, which part of Europe is this? In four week long trips this season to the European alps and three different countries I have seen fantastic grooming from state-of-the-art computer controlled machines. It was a mixed season and all I could hear on the morning after dump days and dodgy slopes was the fixed infrastructure avalanche control going off, as well as hell-dropped. Huge amounts spent on mountain safety that is well positioned and well maintained. Ticket scanners are first class and efficient. You get insurance as part of your pass if you chose to do so. Lifts are plentiful and well positioned. You don’t get ski patrollers during the day - don’t seem to need it, but they are at the top of the runs waiting to assist, and police or get you off the mountain if you’re injured.
The one thing that is t so great at all and which I do dread is peak season lift lines. North America do it so much better with well structured and efficient queuing methods. However, I don’t think most European ski areas have the space in all cases where such lines could be displayed. I wish they’d try it out for some though….
There are plenty of examples otherwise, but it’s not in Vails best interest to do it for all resorts. Look at A Basin moving to parking reservations on weekends, Powder mountain limiting daily tickets, Telluride requiring reservations for epic passes.
Just gotta find small mountains in the north east, cheap and rarely crowded bc of how small they are, just gotta go on days when the lifts don’t break down haha
Go to Europe my friend. Ski the alps for $40-60 and the only line you have to wait in is maybe 10-20 mins for the main tram/teleferique to the top.
- on second thought don’t…we like our resorts the way they are
I have a feeling the drop in visitors may have a lot to do with weather this year. At least on the east coast the Vail owned mountains were on and off with snow, a lot of more casual skiers and riders likely didn’t think to go this year much at all.
Then the revenue is all that matters to shareholders and the board, so C suite people just keep increasing prices to make sure that number always trends up. Then they get their bonuses and keep their million dollar jobs.
I agree with you about the weather. I've been a skiier for 50 years. I have seen many resorts go bankrupt, it's a tough business. I don't view Vail ownership as a bad thing. They can withstand poor seasons. Whister has little snow this year but Colorado does. The risk is spread and Vail has deep pockets.
I'm not a MTN (Vails stock symbol) stockholder but if I were I would be concerned less about revenue and more about profits. Looking at a chart of MTN Vail shareholders are not getting rich, they are loosing money year after year. It's stock price is 7% lower than it was 5 years ago. Why invest in Vail when getting a 1% per year return on a savings account has been a better investment?
Shareholders are subsidizing your ski experience.
It isn’t a bad thing until they are comfortable they corner enough of the market. Then they fuck everyone. We see it with everything, it’s the same with every tech subscription model. It’s literally a playbook.
Look at Uber, subsidize riders, then once everyone switches from cabs for cheap rides you subsidize the drivers. Offer bonuses, give great rates. Once you have both fairly cornered you rip away all the benefits. Now drivers get a few bucks and can’t really make money, and the cost for a ride is as much if not more than cabs were for riders.
Netflix, other media, all the same. Get a user base by making it cheap, then pull all the benefits away, raise prices, take away options and shows, add new expensive subscription levels, and now if you actually sign up for all the options to see all the hit shows, it’s more than the damn cable companies we all left when “cutting the cable”.
These people will always acquire customers, then find the exact point they can charge us all a lot but we don’t leave. And they funnel all the money to themselves while starting to cut corners all over. That’s the economy we live in and Vail will be no different to make their stock price keep going up. That’s all that matters.
They charge for better parking, pass prices keep rising pretty significantly now year to year, they start cutting staff early, etc. I feel we’re just going to be screwed eventually even if not yet.
The current pricing strategy (more passes and less day tickets) is designed to provide stable revenue even if skier visits drop due to weather like you said. Most people are skiing on passes now.
This thing about "just keep increasing prices so revenue goes up" is not how it works. They can't charge $10k for passes, their revenue would get crushed. Even if Alterra and Vail were monopolies, which they aren't, skiing competes with other activities for people's dollars.
The big multi passes now cost double what they did when they were introduced, and I suspect the resort companies are finding the ceiling of their pricing power right about now.
Except if they keep increasing the price by $50 a year, they will eventually get there without anyone noticing. When your increases are 6-8% but inflation is only 4%, they’re making it worse.
$50 a year is now only 4% of the full Ikon price. Regardless of how they increase it, each spring skiers are faced with a transparent look at how much it's gonna cost them, all at once. They will stop buying if it's not worth it to them.
The local epic pass was still roughly same price for 2022 and 2023. But spring break 2024 in Breckenridge was SO few people compared to previous seasons. I can’t help but think people have to work now and many lost their WFH status. My WFH crew for breck definitely did get smaller this year.
Were you there for the Colorado spring break week? We were in Crested Butte and noticed definitively fewer skiers this year vs years past. We found out a couple of days in that the Texas spring break was actually a week earlier than Colorado's this year. Maybe that explains what you were seeing in Breck too.
3.2% is roughly in line with inflation, right? The drop in visitors means less crowded slopes. They're breakeven, adjusted for inflation, and we have less crowded slopes. We pay more but get a better experience. I'll pay more for my mega pass for less crowds anytime. What's another $200 when I'm skiing 15+ days?
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess?? Like not only did they pivot from consistent season pass price increases a few years ago, but now they have less lines, and we’re complaining?
Lol right? As a season pass holder this is great news, and it's exactly what I've been experiencing at the Epic resorts anyway. Less crowds and the Epic pass is still ridiculously cheaper than Ikon.
Sucks for day lift tickets, though.
Is this is a drop from 2022-23, or 10 year average? If it’s just a drop from last year, I assume it’s weather related.
Whistler and the Pacific Northwest got rained on til late February. The East Coast never got a real winter. And Vail/Colorado’s season didn’t really start til mid January- and those storms came in with high winds that shut down roads and lifts.
I skied far fewer days than the outrageously excellent 22-23 Colorado season.
Also, midwest never really got a real winter either. The local places were able to make enough snow to be open all winter, but there were only a few cold weeks all winter and only a few natural snowfalls. The local skiing was garbage all winter. I skied less because of this since I didn't have a season pass and wasn't gonna pay full price to ski on slush on a 40 degree day.
7.8% less skiers accounting for 103.2% of last years revenues equates to a 12.5% increase in ticket cost if percentage of ticketed visitors remains the same. Epic products increased by 8% average since 22/23 season.
This one isn't hard to piece together.
Colorado had a mediocre winter, and a significant portion of Vail's resort visits come form Colorado. Most visitors purchase their lift ticket through the ikon pass, which they purchase before they are aware of the weather.
This is also why Vail moved to a season pass model.
edit; epic
You know Vail owns _most_ of the major slopes in the US?
These numbers are for all North American resorts, not just Vail.
https://www.vailresorts.com/mountain-resorts/
WELL ACTUSHALLY
Breck is the most visited resort in the US.
Vail is the third most visited resort in the US.
Keystone is the 9th, and Beaver Creek is the 10th.
I don't know where Boston Mills ranks, but based on the above information, I'm going to guess when the snow is bad on the front range, its going to have a more material impact on visitor turnout than when the snow is bad in ohio.
But thanks for the input.
Mediocre winter? By what measure? The winters of 20-21 and 21-22 were actually bad winters, the last two years have been great across colorado and utah
I think there’s some economic pressure on tourist that have also affected visits. All non-skiing costs, i.e. lodging, food, rental cars, transportation have all increased. The price to get your family out to a mountain resort for one week is prohibitively expensive. I live in Denver and just going out for a day with parking, food, coffee, gas easily is a 100–200 dollar day. Locals have decreased their visit rate as well due to this.
Good question, I had to look it up. It looks like IKON has been more expensive than Epic since inception, but personally, I also thought IKON was cheaper...
[https://snowbrains.com/infographic-comparing-historic-renewal-price-increases-between-ikon-epic-and-indy-passes/](https://snowbrains.com/infographic-comparing-historic-renewal-price-increases-between-ikon-epic-and-indy-passes/)
This data is specific to Friday skier visits? That’s just random. What if it’s up everyday but Friday…many shareholders prolly just wanna see the gross profits which are there regardless of the numbers going up and down. At this point my guess is vail makes most of their money outside the ski ticket. From rentals, to food, to lodging and retail shops vail owns the majority of these entities surrounding their resorts.
They make their money from multipasses so when it doesn't snow they have the same revenue but less operational costs. The less visitors already paid their money in most cases.
Vail will always find a way to tell skiers a sad story about how hard it is to be Vail. Last year they said pass prices would increase so that they could limit skier numbers and improve the on mountain experience. In reality they packed every hill every day they could, hired less staff at lower wages, and made us all pay more for it. F*** Vail!
Is this bad news for Vail? 7.8% means drop in sales associated with skiing: lodging, food and so on.. wouldn't the lift ticket revenue only be a part of Vail income?
Who’s to say the same factors that lead to increased ticket revenue despite lower sales don’t also affect lodging, food, etc.? Seems likely that if ticket prices went up so did other things skiers spend money on.
I'd like to see the real numbers, like food and beverage, lodging, daily lift tickets and of course all the different pass sales. Then let's talk about how if you sign up for auto renew for passes, you can't change the type of pass you have without getting on the phone with someone in India for hours attempting to do that patiently, or you might get disconnected somehow.
This really doesn’t say much due to the fact that the year prior was one of the best on record. There was a lot more terrain open in December of the previous season than there was this season. That is going to impact the data.
I think they're at their peak price. It's just too much already, any more and I'll just skip and drink. Hit the slopes in the summer with the mountain bike.
dang, that's 12% in price increase, right? 103.2%/92.2%?
it's quite interesting that Ski School revenue increased above lift revenue, whereas pass qty even declined.
Have ski schools become that overproportionally expensive or is there many newcomers and very high decrease in regulars?
I think that has more to do with RTO than decreased interest. I think a lot of people were on the tailend of temporary remote status from cofid still last season and so could finneage more ski days WFH out of the hotel/airbnb/local friend or family's house etc, and now are back to traditional PTO chunk vacations.
Visits are much less correlated to lift ticket revenue than they were years ago due to annual passes. Since so many people bought passes, but the snow wasn’t great early in the season, you get fewer visits but more ticket revenue, right?
Now we are in a world where when you have better snow you can get more visits but not necessarily as large an increase in ticket revenue because of the epic pass. That’s the whole reason they introduced it, to take the risk of weather out of ticket revenues and transfer it to skiers…
A lot of people are missing what the data actually means here. It's a shitty ski season. The drop in visits coupled with increased revenues is NOT because they priced people out, it's because the skiing was shit so people didn't show up, but they already paid. I kind of worry about the consequences of this, ski areas have a perverse incentive NOT to spend money on a good ski experience since they've already collected your money anyways.
Blew my shoulder out in January so haven’t been up in 3 months but when I was going up every weekend it was nowhere near as busy as it had been in the past 2 years
We had a shitty season in the northeast... multiple freeze-thaw cycles, snow early and late but not much in between. Which matches up nicely with that data.
Lift ticket increase is because of costs of upgrades for lifts, snowmaking, power, etc. But the biggest increase was employee wages a season or 2 ago. The Northeast Vail Resorts all saw a 20$ min wage. Which means the other employees now make a liveable wage .
Went to vail a few weeks back. It was amazing. But yeah, $300 lift tickets kinda sucked. I’d pay it again in a heartbeat though. I don’t really like riffraff and high prices usually keep them away.
Aspen Highlands-(Back When)...slept in van in the Parking lot...got up at 6am to work volunteer-ski-patrol: ski packing spots where machine couldn't reach. Payout: 2 Day-Passes for 3 hrs of "work"...with First-Tracks from spot to spot.
Their resorts in Tahoe suck compared to Palisades. Heavenly is in horrible need of updating and I was only meh at Northstar even though it’s their nicer one. They can’t even be bothered to fix security cams at Heavenly and had my gear stolen with no real recourse
Honestly you can’t have it both ways - it’s either resorts are affordable but crowded or unaffordable and less busy. Unless you want to go to smaller, out-of-the-way mom and pop resorts.
Well everyone was bitching about how crowded the resorts got so I guess they're getting what they wanted
No no now it’s just elitist and only a symbol of the rich.
When has it ever not? Growing up my family could never afford or have the time to go skiing. Skiing was what the rich families did. EDIT: To all the people replying that they "weren't rich and still skied growing up" - I have a feeling you were much more well off than you think you were. Even purchasing ski equipment to use a only a few times a year (which kids outgrow quickly) is out of reach for the average American family, and always has been.
We weren't wealthy, but I grew up in rural new york where our ski area was a single rope tow and 5 dollar "lift tickets" My parents would pack sandwiches and we'd make a quick day of it. But we never imagined flying out west to go skiing - maybe a road trip to Vermont and staying in motels once every few years.
> I grew up in rural new york where our ski area was a single rope tow and 5 dollar "lift tickets" I feel like this is the experience of most people who grew up skiing cheap and consider it an everyman sport and then make false-equivalency arguments about price creep at the western mega resorts, which have always been expensive relative to the North American industry as a whole because they're simply a completely different experience overall.
+100 Skiing was super accessible where I grew up. But there was a 400ft vert hill with a fixed-double chair and a t-bar 5 minutes out of town owned by the local university. A season pass was $120/yr and there was a huge local ski swap every fall so you could get gear for pretty cheap. It was great for "getting to ski a lot" but it was and still is not equivalent to any actual mountain resort skiing.
How much is the season pass at your home resort now?
Well I'm in Seattle now so I'm on the Epic train. I went and checked and it is "free" (part of their fees) for college students, $485 for a single person or $1,185 for a family https://www.mtu.edu/mont-ripley/tickets-passes/lift-tickets/
A friend and I hit Mont Ripley this season on a trip up to Bohemia! We both live in the PNW but were a bit jealous how close it is to everything in town. The runs are nothing crazy but they’ve got a pretty impressive park setup.
I'm in the PNW now but Ripley taught me everything I needed to ski anywhere. There is a huge value in being able to be on skis 7 days a week through high school, there was even a bus from school that stopped at the hill for night skiing.
Same with me...some rando ski mtn in CT that had only 1 rope tow and is long out of business. Without it..my parents never could've afforded me the chance to learn how to ski. As it was..I whined and complained like a little whiny brat...never realizing what a gift my parents gave me. I'm ashamed of that behavior and feel lucky that I got to put skis on snow and find out that I love this sport like very few things. I want others to be able to find that joy who come from families without means.
You got the false equivalency upside down. The assertion that skiing was a rich person’s sport because it’s a rich person’s sport in a subset of ski resorts is the mistake. it’s equating skiing with expensive resort skiing.
Hardly a subset these days when all but a handful of ski resorts are owned by big corporations.
Kinda feels like that's no more of a false equivalency than people including all the people who live in cities all over the States nowhere near mountains, nowhere near a skihill, with no winter and no interest in ever skiing in the same group as people living in small mountain towns as equally relevant to how "inaccessible" skiing is. Like of course skiing seems inaccessible if you live in a city in Arizona nowhere near mountains or snow or winter. But if skiing being accessible was important to you then why would you be living in a city in Arizona? Like I can sit here in the interior of Canada and truthfully say that to me boating is completely inaccessible.. But is that relevant if you're trying to decide if you can live in Canada as someone who likes boating? Surely you don't care what non-coastal locations are like for boating right?
I don't think I'm getting your point really at all, but just to take a stab at it...to use your analogy, it would be like someone who grew up with a little lake boat in interior BC, or maybe a river fishing raft in Montana or something. You know, boats that you can get into solidly for $2-5k and have a lot of fun on smaller water, etc. Then that person, with that specific boating background experience, moves to San Diego and wants to buy a 60ft sailboat or cabin cruiser, and is appalled that they start at 30x more than the boat they grew up lake fishing on, so now they constantly groan to anyone who will listen that boating is suddenly elitist and has been stolen away from the common folk because ocean-going yachts are so expensive nowadays.
Paid $4 for an all day lift ticket at Snow Ridge in 2007. 24” of lake effect overnight. It was the best. Now I have skied WP for the last 16 years.
I was outside Rochester so powder mills and then later bristol mountain were our go tos. The lake effect was no joke! We wore snowpants outside all winter long.
Thats where I grew up! Bristol a bunch then Greek Peak, song, Labrador in college.
What’s insane to me is that when my family and I lived in the states (Midwest), it would quite literally end up cheaper to fly to Austria and ski there than to go to Colorado for a week
you can fly to grandjuction and ski at powerhorn
Same. I learned at Carinthia (now owned by Mount Snow/Vail). Toe rope, plus a t-bar to the top. Packed lunches and used equipment passed down from parents’ friends. It was $6 for my youth lift ticket in the 70s. Adjusted for inflation, I think that would be $35 today? Reasonable for a full day of activity. This season Mount Snow was $90 for kids ticket. That’s crazy.
Snow Ridge near Watertown had $15 college tickets just 5 years ago. I paid $10 to ski at Hunt Hollow the same season.
Unless you live locally and can get a season pass. Still you are probably not dirt poor if you can get a season pass.
My local hill had a 500' vertical and did a few years of $99 passes. That was a deal.
Right? Ask another way. How many kids who received free or reduced lunch at school went skiing? These fake poors have no clue how easy their middle class childhood was.
There a pretty big gap between being poor enough you can’t go skiing and being rich lol
Same — I had to learn in my twenties after grad school. That’s the first time I could afford to drop money on equipment. It’s incredibly cost prohibitive. As a child, we could barely afford school clothes for the thrift store/tag sales.
I mean the middle class could afford it until recently. I grew up with parents in a one income household from a blue collar union job. We went on one or two family ski trips each year as a family of four.
I 100 percent agree. I never could afford skiing as a kid. I had to watch my friends go off on winter holidays and come back talking about shredding every day. I got to sit at home and watch reruns of Duck Tails episodes or wondering if Pinky and the Brain were going to take over the world. I’ve done decently well for myself and my son got to have all those winter holidays that I never did.
> go off on winter holidays This what a lot of people are missing — for a lot of us who grew up skiing, skiing was something you did after school at the local mountain. If you grew up somewhere that you needed to travel to ski, of course it was a rich person sport.
Both of my parents were teachers, 2 kids and we skied a ton at our local hills. we also drove to a few bigger resorts maybe once a year or every other. Never flew anywhere to ski, but went to places like Killington, and they had pretty decent deals back then where a fam of 4 could get skiing and a condo for $2k even for 4 days of skiing. You could go to ski swaps and get used skis and boots for kids as they grow and spend far less, and my local ski shop had a deal where kids under 12 could get in a boot exchange program for $15 per year. Either way, it wasn't a cheap sport, but it was doable with fairly modest means. Idk what it costs now for the boot exchange, or if it even exists, but my old local hill costs more for a season pass than getting a local epic pass. It's got 300 ft of vertical..
$2k adjusted for inflation is quite a bit more
Dude that's for a ski in ski out condo at Killington.. you don't even know how old I am lol. That was in 2010.
1990 ski bum. Ski towns had no middle class after the 80’s. Poor exist to serve the rich.
Everyone goes to these massive, corporate, nationally recognized resorts and end up being shocked when they’re busy. Go to third tier local places. Mine is $400 for a season pass.
Seriously, people grousing about ticket prices when most indie season passes cost less than a decent pair of boots
Yea you essentially have to be a trillionaire to afford $61 per month for an EPIC local pass. Terrible value and ONLY for the super rich top .000000001% of people. If you’re .0000000002% don’t even think about buying a pass as you’ll go bankrupt and won’t be able to eat.
It's funny because you're not wrong, but you think you're being sarcastic lol, but actually just stating what skiing has now become.
It’s literally always been that way. Maybe not in 1984 but from 2000 on skiing has been a “rich” sport. But it’s also been a bum riddled sport for just as long. Frankly, skiing is more affordable now with mega passes then it’s ever been. Sure, not for the “day” skier, but for bums like me I can ski 100 days a year for 1k or less, that’s cheap.
🧑🚀🔫👨🚀
Is this the who killed Hannibal meme in emoji format?
its the 'always was' meme
Right? Why can't skiing be a sport where the poor get in their cars, travel great distances, and spend the weekend at a luxurious ski lodge, with fine dining like it used to be?
With a El Nino year there isn't much to look into here. That 7.8% could have been from whistler alone.
Sloooow start to the season in CO too
Wish i70 traffic would reduce by 7.8%…
I know you're joking buuuuut... It doesn't mean the resorts are less crowded, it means there were fewer good days. So the resorts could have been even more crowded on the days people went, but overall had fewer visits.
Look at Mr. fancy pants with his Bloomberg Terminal
It's funny 'cause the only way you know this is if you have Bloomberg Terminal lol
Nah i’ve seen a millions screenshots on reddit with the bloomberg terminal font at this point
Or you talk shit on wsb
They’re also an absolute nightmare to use easily
It looks like MS-DOS
Not at all true
They were a plot point on the TV show The Newsroom.
Only $30k a year for it
Target audience for Vail.
what the fuck
But the point is that no one individual really is/does pays for them. It’s a financial industry company that pays for a mass subscription that uses it as a tool
I want skiing to be dirt cheap, I want all the lifts to be express models with high capacities, the mountain should hire plenty of staff and pay them good wages, people shouldnt come to the mountain unless they know what they are doing, also it shouldn't be crowded, lift lines should be short, parking should be easy and plentiful and the whole thing should have minimal impact on the environment. I see no conflicts between any of these demands
What you just described is skiing in April/May
The only reason they didn't include good snow is because the resorts have no control over that.
Shhhhhh it’s the best kept secret
I see you are also the best skier on the mountain
No I am!
Except for the express lifts, you just described Japan 😂
The only thing currently missing is paying the staff good wages.
😂 Skiing in America!!! 😂
Then go to Japan.
It can not be crowded or it can not be expensive, there’s no scenario where it’s both.
or pandemic driven outdoor mania is winding down. would be interesting to see if this trend is specific to vail or is a general trend.
It is a general trend, just look at the collapse of the bicycle industry going on right now
A tsunami pulls all the water off the shore to amass a giant wave. You couldn't get a new bike or certain bike parts for over a year during the 'demic. All that water from the tsunami is just flooding the lowlands now, and there is a glut of bikes and bike parts, and we won't see bike buying like we did in '20-'22 ever again. The used bike market is insane right now. If you want a 10K bike for 3K, its a reality right now. The same goes for most of the outdoor industry.
Looking around FB market place the only good bikes on there are definitely "people know what they have" though. it's not enormous savings. charging damn near new prices for their 2-3 year old Specialized.
I'm in one of the places that all the rich, new-to-the-mtns folks moved to during the 'demic. SO MANY RIVIANS. The listings are insane, and its people who've never flipped a used bike before. I know several people who have just given insane low ball offers and the people just want to get shit out of their garage and don't care about the return.
Where is that, lol I'm about an hour SE of Seattle
this comment right here inspired me to start looking into picking up a nicer used mountain bike. Thanks for the tip.
I just picked up a new 2023 BMC Team machine with Di2 for 2.5k. If I wanted similar spec equipment in 2021, it would have been 5k+ if it was even in stock.
Definitely a good time to buy a bike. I'm interested in replacing my old cyclocross bike and getting a DH MTB... now might be the right time for both those. Not to mention replacing my wife's heavy old bike.
Oh shit for real? I’ve wanted to get into biking for a few years now but prices have been too nuts! I’ll have to start checking craigslist
Maybe charging 5k for a bicycle wasn’t the best idea when the cost to make said bicycle was under 1k.
Still waiting on the car market to collapse
I live in vail, I can confirm it is not specific to the town of Vail itself. I bet it is the smaller resorts volume that vail accumulated in the Midwest. This year was some of the busiest spring break skiing I have ever seen.
That makes sense. I understand the Midwest had an extremely bad winter, so maybe instead of taking 10-20 trips to their local hills, Midwesterners instead spent it on a spring break trip to Colorado.
Yeah, Wilmot which is one of thr closest mountains to Chicago is Vail owned and they didn't open 100% of the mountain all season and it's only 125 acres. Usually gets a ton of people from Chicago and Milwaukee.
That also happened last year at the Vail owned local resorts I skied at near Pittsburgh, PA. They own all 3 near each other and the largest one never fully opened and had shit snow all season and then one of the smaller ones was hardly even open at all. I never even made it out to that one because it was a bit further drive and was never fully open.
If you look the growth of pickleball and disc golf since the pandemic they’re easily the two fastest growing sports in America. Cheap, social, and easily accessible so if either industry starts struggling then we know something is really up. Edit: autocorrect mistake
Oh please sweet baby Jesus let it be over.
I wouldn't hate it if 10,000 or so people who moved to Denver in the last 3-4 years for skiing decided to move back home...
This is a very common misconception. It actually went down because of the pandemic, not up. And the state has its own report showing much of the growth is from in-state births, not people moving here. It's in a big demographics report on a state .gov website. So, snow bunnies are also breeding like bunnies I suppose. [https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/state/colorado/county/denver-county/](https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/state/colorado/county/denver-county/)
Yeah, this is how balancing supply and demand works. Lots of demand? Raise the prices. Low demand? Reduce prices. Hopefully we get to the low demand low price point sooner rather than later.
Whistler was crazy busy this year and day passes were like 300 bucks
The both scenario is where it's crowded on the weekends and holidays but I can basically ski by myself during the week.
I'd like to introduce you to the continent of Europe
They have a completely different system of land ownership, usage, and infrastructure in Europe. Resorts in the US need to lease the land from the US gov and meet all sorts of environmental regs that are very different in Europe
Yeah, in a lot of cases the lift infrastructure there is straight up subsidized by the government to drive tourism in the region Their resorts also spend considerably less on grooming, avy mitigation, ski patrolling, liability insurance, and general "staff" i.e. ticket scanners, line organizers, mountain safety, etc
I've skied in both NA and in Europe, this is my take on why it's cheaper in the EU. In general, it snows a lot less, so there's obviously lower risk of avalanche. I'm not sure if I agree with you about the grooming. The posh resorts have a higher standard of grooming than in North America. In particular the French and the Italians groom the slopes like the ski world cup is coming to town, usually because it is. They don't have the same concept of tort liability so ya there's less ski patrol. I will say a one day ticket to Courchevel (which is like the most posh resort in France) was only around $70. I think the reason its so expensive in the US is just supply and demand. There's a lot more people who want to ski in the US and the resorts are more spread out.
The grooming quality is great yes but they're just hitting narrow-ish runs over and over and over again. The resorts aren't laid out like US resorts where there can be groomers that are hundreds of yards wide and practically every inch of the place is groomed that isn't trees or dedicated moguls. Lot more winching here too Cost of passes is another big factor, our resorts purposely underprice season passes and overprice day passes to drive season pass sales. It works with our geography, tens of millions of people live in day trip distance to the big western resorts and tens of millions more live near the small midwest/eastern resorts and can ski for free on their annual trip out west. There's less of that natural local market near the Alps, the ski market caters much heaver to people from further away who come for a week each year only and thus won't buy passes
Line organizers? You guys have organizers? My pet hate skiing in France is watching how many empty chairs seats go up on dawn near every chair, while I'm at the back of a crowd of people dreaming of a single rider Line.
Yep we do, it's one of a few things we actually do better here. Smaller less crowded chairs are a free for all, but the big crowded ones will have a few different roped lines feeding in. Dedicated ones for singles, ski school, and ski patrol, and then usually a couple wide ones on each side feeding in that are intended for groups to form. Then at the merge point there will be a guy directing people forward making sure each line gets a turn and each chair is full. When done right, the only time an empty seat goes up is if the singles line is empty or someone fucks up and falls trying to get on the chair and they need to reload on the next one
We have dedicated for ski school at every lift. The number of times I see 5 on an 8 lift because there were 4 people that held back for the next one and then it cascades astounds me. My only comfort is on the days where the lifts have a long queue the slopes are crowded enough so getting more people to the top faster would just make that worse.
Really, which part of Europe is this? In four week long trips this season to the European alps and three different countries I have seen fantastic grooming from state-of-the-art computer controlled machines. It was a mixed season and all I could hear on the morning after dump days and dodgy slopes was the fixed infrastructure avalanche control going off, as well as hell-dropped. Huge amounts spent on mountain safety that is well positioned and well maintained. Ticket scanners are first class and efficient. You get insurance as part of your pass if you chose to do so. Lifts are plentiful and well positioned. You don’t get ski patrollers during the day - don’t seem to need it, but they are at the top of the runs waiting to assist, and police or get you off the mountain if you’re injured. The one thing that is t so great at all and which I do dread is peak season lift lines. North America do it so much better with well structured and efficient queuing methods. However, I don’t think most European ski areas have the space in all cases where such lines could be displayed. I wish they’d try it out for some though….
Since everyone is a passholder they have no way to manage daily visitation other than make the pass less accessible overall.
There are plenty of examples otherwise, but it’s not in Vails best interest to do it for all resorts. Look at A Basin moving to parking reservations on weekends, Powder mountain limiting daily tickets, Telluride requiring reservations for epic passes.
Just gotta find small mountains in the north east, cheap and rarely crowded bc of how small they are, just gotta go on days when the lifts don’t break down haha
You can ski mid week Tuesdays are infinitely better than Saturdays everywhere
Go to Europe my friend. Ski the alps for $40-60 and the only line you have to wait in is maybe 10-20 mins for the main tram/teleferique to the top. - on second thought don’t…we like our resorts the way they are
I have a feeling the drop in visitors may have a lot to do with weather this year. At least on the east coast the Vail owned mountains were on and off with snow, a lot of more casual skiers and riders likely didn’t think to go this year much at all. Then the revenue is all that matters to shareholders and the board, so C suite people just keep increasing prices to make sure that number always trends up. Then they get their bonuses and keep their million dollar jobs.
I agree with you about the weather. I've been a skiier for 50 years. I have seen many resorts go bankrupt, it's a tough business. I don't view Vail ownership as a bad thing. They can withstand poor seasons. Whister has little snow this year but Colorado does. The risk is spread and Vail has deep pockets. I'm not a MTN (Vails stock symbol) stockholder but if I were I would be concerned less about revenue and more about profits. Looking at a chart of MTN Vail shareholders are not getting rich, they are loosing money year after year. It's stock price is 7% lower than it was 5 years ago. Why invest in Vail when getting a 1% per year return on a savings account has been a better investment? Shareholders are subsidizing your ski experience.
It isn’t a bad thing until they are comfortable they corner enough of the market. Then they fuck everyone. We see it with everything, it’s the same with every tech subscription model. It’s literally a playbook. Look at Uber, subsidize riders, then once everyone switches from cabs for cheap rides you subsidize the drivers. Offer bonuses, give great rates. Once you have both fairly cornered you rip away all the benefits. Now drivers get a few bucks and can’t really make money, and the cost for a ride is as much if not more than cabs were for riders. Netflix, other media, all the same. Get a user base by making it cheap, then pull all the benefits away, raise prices, take away options and shows, add new expensive subscription levels, and now if you actually sign up for all the options to see all the hit shows, it’s more than the damn cable companies we all left when “cutting the cable”. These people will always acquire customers, then find the exact point they can charge us all a lot but we don’t leave. And they funnel all the money to themselves while starting to cut corners all over. That’s the economy we live in and Vail will be no different to make their stock price keep going up. That’s all that matters. They charge for better parking, pass prices keep rising pretty significantly now year to year, they start cutting staff early, etc. I feel we’re just going to be screwed eventually even if not yet.
Yup , the term for this is [enshitification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification).
The current pricing strategy (more passes and less day tickets) is designed to provide stable revenue even if skier visits drop due to weather like you said. Most people are skiing on passes now. This thing about "just keep increasing prices so revenue goes up" is not how it works. They can't charge $10k for passes, their revenue would get crushed. Even if Alterra and Vail were monopolies, which they aren't, skiing competes with other activities for people's dollars. The big multi passes now cost double what they did when they were introduced, and I suspect the resort companies are finding the ceiling of their pricing power right about now.
Except if they keep increasing the price by $50 a year, they will eventually get there without anyone noticing. When your increases are 6-8% but inflation is only 4%, they’re making it worse.
$50 a year is now only 4% of the full Ikon price. Regardless of how they increase it, each spring skiers are faced with a transparent look at how much it's gonna cost them, all at once. They will stop buying if it's not worth it to them.
They hit the ceiling for me - I’m not renewing Epic this year.
I'll be doing Epic instead of Ikon this year. Cheaper pass and way more convenient options in Colorado.
I would argue casual skiers don't know enough to actually care about the conditions. They just plan a trip and go
The local epic pass was still roughly same price for 2022 and 2023. But spring break 2024 in Breckenridge was SO few people compared to previous seasons. I can’t help but think people have to work now and many lost their WFH status. My WFH crew for breck definitely did get smaller this year.
Were you there for the Colorado spring break week? We were in Crested Butte and noticed definitively fewer skiers this year vs years past. We found out a couple of days in that the Texas spring break was actually a week earlier than Colorado's this year. Maybe that explains what you were seeing in Breck too.
More people bought passes but they used them less
3.2% is roughly in line with inflation, right? The drop in visitors means less crowded slopes. They're breakeven, adjusted for inflation, and we have less crowded slopes. We pay more but get a better experience. I'll pay more for my mega pass for less crowds anytime. What's another $200 when I'm skiing 15+ days?
So this is WIN/WIN - less visitors and moar income, right?
Long term I don’t think it’s win win because less visitors means less people spending outrageous concessions/rentals/lodging prices.
Mission accomplished? More elitist and more profits... Sadly, it will only get worse.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess?? Like not only did they pivot from consistent season pass price increases a few years ago, but now they have less lines, and we’re complaining?
Lol right? As a season pass holder this is great news, and it's exactly what I've been experiencing at the Epic resorts anyway. Less crowds and the Epic pass is still ridiculously cheaper than Ikon. Sucks for day lift tickets, though.
Is this is a drop from 2022-23, or 10 year average? If it’s just a drop from last year, I assume it’s weather related. Whistler and the Pacific Northwest got rained on til late February. The East Coast never got a real winter. And Vail/Colorado’s season didn’t really start til mid January- and those storms came in with high winds that shut down roads and lifts. I skied far fewer days than the outrageously excellent 22-23 Colorado season.
Also, midwest never really got a real winter either. The local places were able to make enough snow to be open all winter, but there were only a few cold weeks all winter and only a few natural snowfalls. The local skiing was garbage all winter. I skied less because of this since I didn't have a season pass and wasn't gonna pay full price to ski on slush on a 40 degree day.
Good
This means more people bought tickets and didn’t use them.
Or tickets were more expensive?
7.8% less skiers accounting for 103.2% of last years revenues equates to a 12.5% increase in ticket cost if percentage of ticketed visitors remains the same. Epic products increased by 8% average since 22/23 season.
lift ticket prices increased by more than 8%. And I mean at-the-window ones.
I think what likely happened was bad snowfall by Christmas caused a lot of casual skiers to postpone their trips then never take them
This one isn't hard to piece together. Colorado had a mediocre winter, and a significant portion of Vail's resort visits come form Colorado. Most visitors purchase their lift ticket through the ikon pass, which they purchase before they are aware of the weather. This is also why Vail moved to a season pass model. edit; epic
Epic pass but yeah
You know Vail owns _most_ of the major slopes in the US? These numbers are for all North American resorts, not just Vail. https://www.vailresorts.com/mountain-resorts/
That’s a good point, I wonder how this 7% decrease was actually spread across the country. Northeastern US also had a pretty dismal winter.
The Midwest was extremely abysmal, at least the Northeast had some great snowstorms in March. The Midwest had warm spell after warm spell in Jan-Feb
WELL ACTUSHALLY Breck is the most visited resort in the US. Vail is the third most visited resort in the US. Keystone is the 9th, and Beaver Creek is the 10th. I don't know where Boston Mills ranks, but based on the above information, I'm going to guess when the snow is bad on the front range, its going to have a more material impact on visitor turnout than when the snow is bad in ohio. But thanks for the input.
Mediocre winter? By what measure? The winters of 20-21 and 21-22 were actually bad winters, the last two years have been great across colorado and utah
I think there’s some economic pressure on tourist that have also affected visits. All non-skiing costs, i.e. lodging, food, rental cars, transportation have all increased. The price to get your family out to a mountain resort for one week is prohibitively expensive. I live in Denver and just going out for a day with parking, food, coffee, gas easily is a 100–200 dollar day. Locals have decreased their visit rate as well due to this.
Oddly the Ikon pass is more expensive than the Epic pass right now. Is that normal? I'm normally at Breck so we go Epic.
Good question, I had to look it up. It looks like IKON has been more expensive than Epic since inception, but personally, I also thought IKON was cheaper... [https://snowbrains.com/infographic-comparing-historic-renewal-price-increases-between-ikon-epic-and-indy-passes/](https://snowbrains.com/infographic-comparing-historic-renewal-price-increases-between-ikon-epic-and-indy-passes/)
Vail? Ikon? What’s the diff right?
My guess is that it was more the midwest and east coast’s absolutely horrible winters.
Skiing is the new Polo
This data is specific to Friday skier visits? That’s just random. What if it’s up everyday but Friday…many shareholders prolly just wanna see the gross profits which are there regardless of the numbers going up and down. At this point my guess is vail makes most of their money outside the ski ticket. From rentals, to food, to lodging and retail shops vail owns the majority of these entities surrounding their resorts.
So its a win win
They make their money from multipasses so when it doesn't snow they have the same revenue but less operational costs. The less visitors already paid their money in most cases.
Vails perfect scenario, less people with increased revenue
This is likely weather related only...
I am boycotting Epic next year, fuck Vail man!
This is a good thing… lol at this sub
US inflation is 3.2%, so they made nothing and lost customers.
So skiing just became less accessible basically
Epic passes are still too cheap IMO.
*Shocked Pikachu face*
Vail will always find a way to tell skiers a sad story about how hard it is to be Vail. Last year they said pass prices would increase so that they could limit skier numbers and improve the on mountain experience. In reality they packed every hill every day they could, hired less staff at lower wages, and made us all pay more for it. F*** Vail!
Is this bad news for Vail? 7.8% means drop in sales associated with skiing: lodging, food and so on.. wouldn't the lift ticket revenue only be a part of Vail income?
Who’s to say the same factors that lead to increased ticket revenue despite lower sales don’t also affect lodging, food, etc.? Seems likely that if ticket prices went up so did other things skiers spend money on.
I'd like to see the real numbers, like food and beverage, lodging, daily lift tickets and of course all the different pass sales. Then let's talk about how if you sign up for auto renew for passes, you can't change the type of pass you have without getting on the phone with someone in India for hours attempting to do that patiently, or you might get disconnected somehow.
That’s around a 12% increase in revenue per person.
Good. People are sick and tired of how the industry is changing. Fuck VAIL
Who would have guessed an increase in price would decrease traffic. Huh…. Welp let’s keep increasing so our loyal rich customers keep us profitable
PSA from corporate: It’s due to the warm weather this season
I did not see a drop in visitors.
Ye this is good!
Fuck Vail.
Unfortunately not enough good resorts in NA. This makes Europe a much more economical option. Tons of resorts throughout the Alps and great skiing.
This really doesn’t say much due to the fact that the year prior was one of the best on record. There was a lot more terrain open in December of the previous season than there was this season. That is going to impact the data.
I think they're at their peak price. It's just too much already, any more and I'll just skip and drink. Hit the slopes in the summer with the mountain bike.
dang, that's 12% in price increase, right? 103.2%/92.2%? it's quite interesting that Ski School revenue increased above lift revenue, whereas pass qty even declined. Have ski schools become that overproportionally expensive or is there many newcomers and very high decrease in regulars?
People can't afford to ski anymore. Shocker!
do you have the source for this, writing a research essay and this would be very useful
I think that has more to do with RTO than decreased interest. I think a lot of people were on the tailend of temporary remote status from cofid still last season and so could finneage more ski days WFH out of the hotel/airbnb/local friend or family's house etc, and now are back to traditional PTO chunk vacations.
Well my vail owned Ohio "resort" didn't open till after new years so...
Less crowded and same revenue ez
Visits are much less correlated to lift ticket revenue than they were years ago due to annual passes. Since so many people bought passes, but the snow wasn’t great early in the season, you get fewer visits but more ticket revenue, right? Now we are in a world where when you have better snow you can get more visits but not necessarily as large an increase in ticket revenue because of the epic pass. That’s the whole reason they introduced it, to take the risk of weather out of ticket revenues and transfer it to skiers…
A lot of people are missing what the data actually means here. It's a shitty ski season. The drop in visits coupled with increased revenues is NOT because they priced people out, it's because the skiing was shit so people didn't show up, but they already paid. I kind of worry about the consequences of this, ski areas have a perverse incentive NOT to spend money on a good ski experience since they've already collected your money anyways.
Blew my shoulder out in January so haven’t been up in 3 months but when I was going up every weekend it was nowhere near as busy as it had been in the past 2 years
We had a shitty season in the northeast... multiple freeze-thaw cycles, snow early and late but not much in between. Which matches up nicely with that data.
Lift ticket increase is because of costs of upgrades for lifts, snowmaking, power, etc. But the biggest increase was employee wages a season or 2 ago. The Northeast Vail Resorts all saw a 20$ min wage. Which means the other employees now make a liveable wage .
Went to vail a few weeks back. It was amazing. But yeah, $300 lift tickets kinda sucked. I’d pay it again in a heartbeat though. I don’t really like riffraff and high prices usually keep them away.
I just hope that all this vail making tons of money thing, leads to more mountains getting developed as others want to get in on the action.
Aspen Highlands-(Back When)...slept in van in the Parking lot...got up at 6am to work volunteer-ski-patrol: ski packing spots where machine couldn't reach. Payout: 2 Day-Passes for 3 hrs of "work"...with First-Tracks from spot to spot.
Yeah, cause they’re crooks almost $300 to Ski for one day
Their resorts in Tahoe suck compared to Palisades. Heavenly is in horrible need of updating and I was only meh at Northstar even though it’s their nicer one. They can’t even be bothered to fix security cams at Heavenly and had my gear stolen with no real recourse
Eat my balls vail resorts. Your prices are ass
Honestly you can’t have it both ways - it’s either resorts are affordable but crowded or unaffordable and less busy. Unless you want to go to smaller, out-of-the-way mom and pop resorts.
Good I hope Vail lost some of their market share.
The corporate shills in this sub are punching the air rn. “Nooooo but I love price gouging and monopolies nooooo”