Supply issues for chairlift manufacturers, including Grand-Junction-based Poma, have stalled openings for new lifts across Colorado, North America
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Posted inOutdoors
Resort owner’s donations to Lauren Boebert’s campaign irks ski industry climate advocates
Jay Kemmerer, the owner of Wyoming’s Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, has long supported candidates who oppose progressive climate policy, even while his ski area promotes climate action.
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors, Outsider
Colorado mountain towns can now use tourism tax revenue to deal with visitor hordes, housing shortage
Voters in mountain towns could soon redirect lodging taxes traditionally collected to lure visitors toward housing and recreational infrastructure. Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 1117, the bipartisan legislation allowing that option, into law Thursday in Edwards. Since 2002, voters in 29 Colorado counties have approved a lodging tax for tourism marketing. The new legislation […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors, Outsider
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. […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors, Outsider
Busier-than-ever year for Grand Junction chairlift maker reveals strength of nation’s resort industry
GRAND JUNCTION — The welders are happy to show their boss the final piece of what’s been a two-year project. The massive steel structure is ready for shipping to finish off the multi-year construction of one of the largest gondolas in the country, stretching between two resort villages at California’s Palisades Tahoe ski area. “Check […]
Posted inNews, Outdoors
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 […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Outdoors, Outsider
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, Growth, Housing, News, Outsider
As record-setting real estate sales continue in Colorado resort towns, buyers are now looking way down valley
The blistering pace of real estate sales is continuing in Colorado’s high country, with every resort community setting new records in each month this year. “It’s been crazy,” Crested Butte broker Frank Konsella said, “way past everything in 2019 and 2020.” Last year saw record numbers of home buyers paying highest-ever prices for properties in […]
Posted inBusiness, Housing, News, Outsider
Flooded with tourists, Colorado mountain towns are starting to limit short-term rentals to combat housing crisis
Short-term rental properties are under fire in the Colorado mountains as communities weather record traffic, a surge of new residents, soaring home prices and a painful shortage of workers. “We are beaten down. Everybody is overworked. We have way too many people here and it’s not sustainable and it’s not productive,” Martha Keene, a longtime […]
Posted inBusiness, Housing, News, Newsletters, Outsider
Storage units becoming as hard to get as affordable housing as wealthy remote workers take over the high country
Chase Beck has fielded dozens of calls like this in the past few months. “They say ‘I just had the floor taken out from under me. I’ve been living here for years. I need to move out in 30 days and I’ve got nowhere to go. Can you help?’” Beck says. The waiting list at […]