Park City Loves Vail.....NOT

[Bubba]

Another 2021-2022 season success story

Vail Resorts broadsided in Park City as range of PCMR grievances brought to City Hall

https://www.parkrecord.com/news/park-ci ... city-hall/

[hillbangin]

They thought the Cummings were bad...

Be very careful what you wish for.

Glad K is on team Ikon.

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[GlacierBoy]

So the groundswell of locals’ negative public opinion against VR has built up and continues to make national news. The Steven’s Pass anti-VR petition on Change.org has 48,000 signatures and has become a National “Hold VR accountable” campaign - the push is to have folks cancel the AutoRenew option on Epic Passes.

https://www.change.org/p/vail-resorts-h ... ccountable

Vail will surely try a PR and Marketing campaign to sway opinion as Epic Passes come up for renewal in the next few months

IKON passholders on chat rooms and Facebook groups are speculating that some Epic passholders May switch to IKON for next winter. As a result, Would IKON resorts get swamped next winter ? The new CEO Lynch was formerly Chief Marketing officer so surely she would try marketing tactics? The impact on IKon passSales and by association - skier volume at Killington and other IKon ski areas - is what we’re all watching.

VR had mediocre earnings -and revenue and skier metrics were mediocre - in their Jan. 14 earnings release. The release reads like a bunch of corporate Mumbo jumbo with very little details by geography

https://investors.vailresorts.com/news- ... on-date-23

In December, Vail Daily had an analysis of Wall Street’s opinion on Vail Resorts’ stock MTN for investors.
https://www.vaildaily.com/news/wall-str ... ts-issues/

From their 10K Annual Filing,
MTN has about $2 Billion in long-term debt but much of the debt does not come due until after 2025 so they may not have a cash crunch for a few years even if Epic Pass sales tank.
The Resorts and Real estate businesses combined kick out about $500 Million in cash flow (EBITDA) per year.

And here’s a key excerpt from the December Vail Daily article from the Truist Wall Street analyst:
The big question cited in the report is what will be the financial impact from customer dissatisfaction with the ski experience.

“To be clear, we are hardly saying the sky is falling and we are not about to reduce earnings estimates yet, rather it is not out of the question that these labor issues may have some financial impact, though extremely difficult to quantify, on MTN’s revenues and margins,” Truist wrote. “We see the best case scenario for MTN is that these labor-related issues get sorted out sooner than later and customers give it a ‘pass’ this year and the issues do not reduce the likelihood of one (re)purchasing an Epic pass for next season.”

But Truist did say it is possible that MTN loses some pass holders to IKON or nonrenewal.

“MTN may need to bite the bullet and raise wages even higher in order to bring the quality of the product back to its historically excellent levels,“ Truist wrote.

[spanky]

I find humor in the fact that people complained to city hall because lift lines were too long.

Don't.
Waste.
Your.
Breath.

[easyrider16]

Yeah how much tax revenue does city hall get from Vail? Probably more than all the complainers' taxes combined.

I appreciate that locals hate Vail. Their business model is all about maximum touron visits and that's pretty antithetical to locals. But I'm tired of the whining. This is the free market at work. Don't like it? Vote with your dollars and / or find a new local mountain.

[Bubba]

Meanwhile, at another Vail owned resort, Stowe…

https://www.wcax.com/2022/02/06/curbing ... ffic-jams/

[Big Bob]

I remember at one time K Zoners were wishing that Vail would buy Killington, but we got stuck with Powdr. Anyone else happy with what we ended up with for ownership?

[skiadikt]

certainly they're making it up in volume but if stowe was getting $1800-2000 for a season pass and now $700-800, not sure how sustainable these cheap passes are. same with ikon. k/powdr has held the line with their season passes but guessing ikon has to be taking a chunk of that business.

[KingsFourMan]

Saturday skiing at an Epic resort is no longer an option except for the first hour and half of the day at most. We are on the Epic pass this year for certain reasons but it's one and done for us. Okemo on Saturday was a total zoo. By 9:45 all of the main lifts had huge lines. Skied from 8:00 to about 10:45 and as we were leaving people were still pouring in. We couldn't get out of there fast enough. Can't imagine what President's Weekend is going to look like there.

[Captain Hafski]

Not sure where to post this, but as noted above, we will see what happens w.r.t. Epic passholders switching to Ikon next year.

Personal Opinion: We are screwed !

It seems a no brainer that lots and lots of Epic passholders, that also know and get reports from Ikon passholders, will make the switch.

[easyrider16]

At least K limits Ikons to 7 days. I hear from Sugarbush friends that they've never seen more crowds since Alterra's purchase. Next season could be ugly for them and Stratton.

I kinda hope these cheap passes are unsustainable. It's cool to have a pass to all these resorts, but I'd rather pay more for less crowds.

[hillbangin]

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2022/02/ ... roperties/



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[HelmetCam]

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-a ... rcrowding/
Vail Resorts Sold a Record Number of Passes. Now, Their Ski Areas Are Facing a Logistical Nightmare.

In addition to wages, employees were concerned by what they see as a one-size-fits-all approach to resort management as well as by Vail’s ongoing efforts to “centralize corporate functions” through its headquarters in Broomfield, Colorado, as the company wrote in a 2019 statement. This process has included laying off members of resort marketing, finance, and human-resource teams over the last several years. But employees say that such centralization has created confusion and left mountains lacking key institutional knowledge.

One former Peak Resorts employee who worked in the marketing department said that soon after Vail’s acquisition, resort general managers felt they had less say over day-to-day operations—“what to groom, where to make snow, when to make snow.” Instead, regional directors and corporate employees in Broomfield took over decision-making.

[Bubba]

Park City chief appears at city council meeting

https://www.parkrecord.com/news/park-ci ... lly-tough/