It’s been a busy couple weeks for Vail Resorts.
Unionized lift mechanics in Crested Butte Mountain authorized a strike. The company reported flat visits through Christmas and the New Year while an arctic blast certainly slowed traffic during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Skiers who visited Park City Mountain during the recent ski patroller strike were offered credits for next year’s passes as one of those skiers filed a class-action lawsuit over their “colossal disaster” of a vacation. Dozens of workers at Breckenridge called in sick to protest living conditions at company-owned housing.
The Wall Street Journal ran a cover story on Sunday, headlined “Vail Resorts Has an Epic Problem,” detailing the company’s recent challenges and depressed stock prices, with a sentence that traveled far and wide across resort industry inboxes this week:
“The driving force behind everything Vail does is the ‘guest experience,’ a phrase (Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten) Lynch repeated 11 times in the 30-minute interview.”
And following the strike settlement with about 200 Park City Mountain patrollers — that delivered an average wage increase of $4 an hour with veterans getting a $7.75 hourly bump — Vail Resorts announced immediate pay raises at six ski areas where patrollers mitigate avalanche hazards. But that immediate raise does not apply at any resorts with unionized ski patrollers, who first must negotiate an amended contract.
“Vail Resorts is investing in a new category of skills-based pay for patrol, Mountain Terrain Complexity, which recognizes the unique skills needed by patrollers who work at our resorts with avalanche terrain,” Bill Rock, the president of Vail Resorts mountain division, said in a letter sent to ski patrollers this week.
The new wage program delivered immediate pay increases to hourly patrollers at Vail, Beaver Creek, Whistler Blackcomb, Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood. The raise is part of the company’s Patrol Project, which began in 2019 as a way to improve pay, benefits and leadership opportunities for patrollers. A new Enterprise Patrol Advisory Team will review and shape the model that determines how mountain complexity should translate into increased wages for ski patrollers.
At Vail Mountain, the company’s flagship ski area, the pay increase amounted to a 9% to 18% raise, depending on seniority.
The pay increase is not instant for unionized ski patrollers at Breckenridge, Crested Butte Mountain, Keystone and Stevens Pass ski areas. All those ski areas require avalanche mitigation by ski patrollers. Rock said compensation changes for union-represented patrollers are subject to contractual collective bargaining agreements and processes.
“The terrain and avalanche complexity pay will apply to unionized patrols working at our mountain resorts with avalanche terrain through a contract amendment, and we are getting started on that process with each unit,” a company spokeswoman said in an email.
Employers cannot unilaterally raise or decrease wages for unionized employees, said University of Denver law professor Roberto Corrada.
“They can do whatever they want with nonunion workers, but they’d be asking for it. The union might strike. It depends entirely on the nature of the workforce and the workers involved,” Corrada said in an email. “For example, lower wage workers are usually not unionized and if the employer increases their wages, the union usually doesn’t care much.”
But unionized patrollers at Vail Resorts ski areas insist the company could hand out pay increases without launching typically lengthy collective bargaining sessions. Vail Resorts has spent many months negotiating contracts with unionized Crested Butte lift mechanics and Keystone ski patrollers.
“I think there’s a certain degree of frustration that they would not offer those same incentives to unionized ski patrol when they certainly have the ability to do so,” said Ryan Dineen, a longtime ski patroller at Breckenridge ski area, where union-represented patrollers will begin negotiating a new contract later this year.
Dineen said the pay increase by Vail Resorts is directly connected to the strike by patrollers at Park City Mountain.
“This reflects the strength of collective bargaining,” he said.
The Park City agreement has resonated with resort workers in other mountain towns, where the cost of living and housing has skyrocketed in recent years. A growing number of those workers are forming unions, including ski patrollers at Arapahoe Basin who voted this month to join the United Mountain Workers union, part of the Communication Workers of America Local 7781. The agreement at Park City has illuminated the role of collective bargaining for increased pay and benefits.
And how a strike can be leveraged to squeeze better pay out of resort operators.
Crested Butte lift mechanics authorize a strike
The lift mechanics at the 12-lift Crested Butte Mountain Resort formed a union in June 2023. The Crested Butte Lift Maintenance Union met with Vail Resorts for 13 bargaining sessions between January and October last year. Since the Park City Mountain strike ended the mechanics union has met with the resort operator three times. The union is asking for additional wages for mechanics who have extra training and an overall increase of $2 an hour. The starting wage for a lift mechanic at the ski area is $21 an hour.
“We are in a job where we are in hazardous situations a lot more often than most people at the resort,” said Thomas Pearman, a 29-year-old who has been working on Crested Butte Mountain lifts for five years.
Pearman said the resort operator came back with “a new proposal that was the equivalent to what we are already making.”
“They told us that is the best they can do,” said Pearman, the president of the lift maintenance union, one of only two chairlift mechanics’ unions represented by the 1,100-member United Mountain Workers.
The vote this week authorizing a strike was “a strong majority” among the union of 10 mechanics and one electrician, Pearman said. The union has started an online petition and fundraising campaign to support the workers.
“At this point it feels like we are hitting a dead end, where they actually do not want to negotiate. We are hoping that if they see we are serious they will foster some actual bargaining,” Pearman said. “We’ve had about 50% turnover in the last one-and-a-half years. We’ve had people told to go find a different job. It’s frustrating. Without this crew, there would be a lot of little things missed that are needed to keep these machines operating.”
An emailed statement from a Vail Resorts spokeswoman said there are 12 outstanding issues being negotiated with the lift maintenance union, 10 of which are currently in the union’s court and the company is awaiting a response. The statement said if the union “decided to take drastic action” the ski area will remain open.
“We continue to negotiate in good faith with the union that represents the lift maintenance team at Crested Butte Mountain Resort and are making progress,” reads a statement from JD Crichton, the new general manager at the ski area. “We’ve reached tentative agreements on roughly half of the articles and are committed to reaching a resolution on the full contract. We have tremendous respect for our lift maintenance employees and all of our team members, who are the heartbeat of our resort.”
Last week Vail Resorts reported 2024-25 visits to its resorts through the first week of January was on-pace with the start of the 2023-24 season, when it reported 17.6 million visits, down from 19.4 million in 2022-23. Thanks to increased prices for passes and lift tickets, the company said lift-ticket revenue was up 4.5% through Jan. 7 compared to the same stretch last season.
The company said the early snow in November drove local visitation, while visits by vacationers to the its ski areas in California, Colorado, Utah and Washington were down compared to the start of the 2023-24 ski season.
The showing through the start of the early season reflects the stability the company has sought with off-season sales of its season passes and lift tickets. The strike or its aftermath were not mentioned in the company’s Jan. 16 season-to-date update. The company told investors last week that it expects a shift toward more vacationers and maintained its December 2024 projection that it would generate between $838 million and $894 million in resort earnings for the 2024-25 season.
Park City holiday skiers get credits for next year’s Epic Pass
The company also offered credits to skiers who visited Park City Mountain Resort during the nearly two-week patroller strike that hobbled the ski area during the Christmas and New Year holidays.
“We have heard our guests’ feedback and are providing credits to those who skied and snowboarded at Park City Mountain during that time,” reads a statement from Deirdra Walsh, the head of Park City Mountain. “We are committed to rebuilding the trust and loyalty of our guests by delivering an exceptional experience at Park City Mountain this season and in the future.”
The largest ski area operator in North America is offering pass holders up to a $65.44 credit for every day they skied during the Dec. 27 to Jan. 8 patroller strike, with a minimum discount of 25% off an Epic Pass for the 2025-26 season. Skiers who bought lift tickets during the strike will get a 50% credit based on what they paid.
The credits only can be used toward the purchase of a 2025-26 season Epic Pass product. Click here for details on the credits plan.
The credit amounts to a 50% discount on advance-purchase Epic Passes based on eight days of use, or $130.88 a day. Vail Resorts sold 2.3 million advance purchase lift tickets and season passes for the 2024-25 ski season. The company collected $1.4 billion from selling lift tickets and season passes for the 2024-25 ski season and 65% of that — more than $900 million — came from sales before its North American ski areas opened.