Vail Resorts has been lately a lot on the news and not for the good reasons. From a strike with the Park City Ski Patrol over salaries and benefits issues during the Christmas holidays, to the number of Epic passes sold descending for the first time by 2%, and to issues with the different ski resorts bought by Vail, one could only question if the Vail Resorts’ Epic dream is starting to falter skiers and the ski areas it owns.

There have been numerous posts of the strike action of the Park City Ski Patrol against Vail Resorts this past Christmas holidays. You can see a great account of it on this Washington Post article by Allison Pohle (you can read it for free on the MSN website here).

The strike in Park City Mountain. Is the Epic dream starting to falter the ski areas it owns?

The strike of Park City resulted in Vail Resorts bringing ski patrols from other mountains they own to operate part of the ski resort of Park City during this Christmas season! As there were not many ski patrols working, the bombing and securing the trails before opening was not possible, and very little was opened on a weekend with great snow and full occupancy in the resort. And that caused “Epic” lines Visitors took it to social media to post pictures of the queues and protest of the way they were treated, after spending a lot money to spend their holidays in the resort.

Vail Resorts’ Model.

The idea of the Epic Pass at the beginning looked brilliant. Sales of ski passes always depend on snow, and on those seasons when snow is not that good, sales of ski passes really suffer. By creating a season pass, that, if you are skiing a lot, is not that expensive, and allows you to go skiing in different areas in the US & abroad, the company locks early sales before the ski season even opens, and they assure a safe income.

Vail Resorts depends on the sales of this passes for their model to work and to pay their investors, as it is a public company. The idea of getting more resorts is to make the offer more interesting for skiers and boarders so they keep on purchasing this pass early before the season started. The ski pass has been increasing in price over the years, so now the season pass costs around USD 1000. This made that, even if number of ski passes sold was 2% down from last year, the income from these passes is up 8% year on year. Owners of the Epic pass are charged some other items when they come into town, such as super expensive parking tickets, over the top rate for ski lessons and rentals. If you did not buy your season pass before, skiing can cost between USD 275 and USD 300 per day per person. And full day group lessons between USD 222 and USD 373.

The idea for Vail of acquiring more lift resorts is to do scale economies, which you think is understandable, but kind of kill the essence of skiing. Their corporate offices moved from Avon, Colorado years ago into Broomfield, CO, located between Denver and Boulder.

What went wrong? Is the Vail Resorts’ Epic dream starting to falter skiers and the ski areas it owns?

If you think that if working there, you just drive quickly down the I-70 for a quick afternoon of skiing, when there is traffic (thanks to all those Epic passes holders- and Ikon passes holders too, to be fair), you can have a surprise of sitting in traffic for a long time!

Also, so many people buying these Epic passes, makes people from the smaller resorts in the middle of the country or on the East Coast, go and try the big Western resorts as well. Then you get conglomerations of skiers and boarders in these big resorts on weekends and holidays that are unviable. I guess you can always ski mid-week and out of holidays, but if you have kids in schools, you have your hands tied!

Lots of skiers on the resort, means overcrowded pistes. That can create all sorts of security problems. From my experience, Americans tend to ski faster and you see many out-of-control skiers around! So much, that ski patrols sometimes are posted on ‘slow zones skiing areas’ in pistes at closing time, and they will take the ski pass to those coming out at excessive speed or out of control. Lots of collisions can really wreck somebody’s holidays, and in the States, where litigations are common, can bring lots of problems to the resorts.

What is happening in Crested Butte with its flights from Chicago. Is the Vail Resorts’ Epic dream starting to falter skiers and the ski areas it owns?

And how do resorts feel when bought by Vail? I think that abroad, like in Switzerland, the resorts think at first that is great, as more development will come. For what I’ve seen in Colorado itself, last time I went to Crested Butte after one event I work for, the resort was closed (early). And what I’ve read on the Crested Butte News – a real good article by Mark Reaman, Vail Resorts is not helping the businesses of Crested Butte to assure the flights from Chicago into Gunnison (GUC- the airport used for Crested Butte). Crested Butte needs these “bums on seats” to get people into the resort. As Crested Butte is a bit out of the way – not on the Front Range as Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breckenridge, etc., the local driving market is smaller, and they depend on those people coming from markets such as Chicago, Houston, etc.

In my time working for CBMR (Crested Butte Mountain Resort), I do remember the resort paying for assuring United to fly from Chicago into Gunnison. Then when the Müller family was owner (this was after my time), the businesses in town started to chip in when the Gunnison Valley Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) was formed and CBMR under the Müller family agreed to pay USD 500,000 towards the guarantee needed to have those flights.

John Norton, Executive Director of the Tourism and Prosperity Partnership (TAPP) explained in the RTA meeting last week, that helping with these flights would be a Vail responsibility. Before, local businesses allowed not to hold Vail responsible if they kept the air desk open and continue to support flights to their key flying markets.

This year Vail Resorts is not willing to give any moneys and there is not an air desk or money to promote these flights. The RTA will check with other towns of ski resorts owned by Vail to see if there is a similar feeling and what they could all do about this.

CBMR has stated to Crested Butte News that engaging with their community is their top priority. It would be hoped they can come to an understanding, as the town needs those flights to operate successfully plus they should now being able to lock flights for next year.

Check the Must-Read Guide to Vail Mountain here.

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Featured Image: Family Ski School Instruction in Vail, CO. Photo: Jack Affleck. Vail Resorts. Is the Vail Resorts’ Epic dream starting to falter skiers and the ski areas it owns?