The company’s five resorts here are seeing mellow traffic despite well-above-average snowpacks
Epic Pass
Posted inBusiness
Vail Resorts rebounds from pandemic, labor struggles with best-ever financial performance in 2022
The largest resort operator in North America reported a record 17.3 million skier visits and $2.5 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2022
Posted inNews, Outdoors
Record number of skier days at American resorts this year despite so-so snowfall
For decades, traffic to American ski resorts has relied on one thing: Snow. Big snowfall meant big business. But the busiest season ever in American skiing — 2021-22, with an all-time high of 61 million skier days — was not a remarkable snow year. The previous high points for national skier visits were set in […]
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Colorado’s independent ski areas are thriving in the shadow of dueling, consolidating resort giants
In the shadow of battling behemoths, smaller, independent ski areas are thriving. “It’s not just that the big areas are crowded and skiers want to escape crowds,” said Bob Nicolls, the owner of Monarch ski area, which saw record visitation in 2021-22, with income for the ski area climbing 20% above the previous season. “I […]
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Vail Resorts promises $175 million more for employees, bumps starting pay to $20 an hour
Vail Resorts will spend $175 million more a year on employees, increasing pay by more than 30% after a grueling season that saw North America’s largest resort operator vilified as it struggled to open chairs and handle crowds. Kirsten Lynch celebrated her 100th day as CEO of Vail Resorts this week, marking what was likely […]
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Vail Resorts offers end-of-season bonus as ski areas struggle through labor crisis
Jeremy Rubingh, a documentary filmmaker who focuses on climate and public lands issues, spent about 10 minutes on his phone after Christmas writing an angry screed against Vail Resorts and the company’s struggle to open terrain at the Stevens Pass ski area in Washington state. “When I posted it online, I thought ‘I don’t know, […]
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Epic crowds are colliding with epic labor shortages at ski areas
Alex Kaufman thought it would be an amusing website. Something to poke fun at the largest resort operator in North America. So he bought epicliftlines.com for $12 last March, just as Vail Resorts announced a plan to slash the price of its popular Epic Pass by 20%. “I thought ‘Oh, this could become a thing. […]
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Vail Resorts sold 2.1 million Epic Passes for 2021-22 season after cutting prices by 20%
Vail Resorts’ decision to cut the price of its Epic Passes by 20% spurred 2.1 million skiers to buy the passes, which range from early purchased day tickets to unrestricted, season-long access. That’s a 700,000 bump in passes from 2020-21 and 900,000 more than than the 2019-20 season. The company on Thursday reported its earnings […]
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Snow may not be piling up at Colorado ski resorts this season, but anxiety sure is
It wasn’t that long ago that ski resort operators lost sleep over snowfall. Then they had to fret over once-in-a-lifetime protocols to limit the spread of contagion at their ski areas. Now, the worries are stacked even deeper, with affordable housing, dwindling numbers of workers and ever-lengthening lift lines joining the perennial fretting over snow […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors
Colorado ski resort operators turbo-charged technology last season, and many of the upgrades are here to stay
For many years, resort captains have been slow and steady with investment in technology. The behind-the-scenes stuff — wireless networks, point-of-sale and lodging reservation systems, online ticket sales — typically was overshadowed by flashy projects involving new chairlifts and terrain. The coronavirus turbo-charged ski resort interest in decidedly unsexy technology, which is now a top […]