Vermont’s ski Industry reports 6.5% business rebound for 2021-22 winter season

[Bubba]

Still not fully back from the pandemic but significant improvement over last year.

https://vermontbiz.com/news/2022/june/1 ... 6_15_2022)

[PinnacleJim]

Wonder how Killington's 2021-22 skier days compare to pre-pandemic levels. Suspect they did pretty well.

[Mister Moose]

Recapping Killington's season:

● About a 5% reduction from the usual 200 day season.
● About 2/3 the usual mid-season snowfall based on Mansfield averages. Killington's reported snowfall was also low until late in the season, the technical number does not represent the season. The late season snowfall was disproportionately high altitude only.
● There were about 12 r*in freeze events, higher than normal. Several were just one week apart.
● Both opening day and closing day attendance are growing. There were over 2,000 people closing day (Moosetimate™), plus a fair number that just came to gawk and not ski. Most were pass holders, with Killington reporting 180 ticket sales, based on the $4,500 donation number announced.
● Given the weather challenges, Killington's skier visits were strong. The few big snow days had cars down the access road nearly to Glazebrook.
● Fridays continue to be strong as 3 day weekends seem to be the driver. Holiday traffic was not above average as conditions and trail counts were down.
● Spring was exceptional, lots of sunshine, even the forecast rainy days ended up being sprinkles. Strong depth on Superstar, although some years had more post closing snowpack than this year.
● The US was up 3.5% in skier visits, to an all time high, by contrast Vermont is 8% off it's all time high.

For the third season in a row, season passes surpassed day tickets in share of skier visits. Season pass holders made up 51.9% of visits nationally, with day tickets claiming 37.3% of visits (the balance is claimed by off-duty employees, complimentary products, etc.).

That means 10.8% of skier visits are comped. How many would have guessed that high?
This also means that leaving off comps, season pass holders account for 58.1% of revenue visits.
The effect of mega passes are showing up. It would be interesting to see how that varies across regions and some of the bigger resorts.

[Captain Hafski]

Recapping Killington's season:

● About a 5% reduction from the usual 200 day season.
● About 2/3 the usual mid-season snowfall based on Mansfield averages. Killington's reported snowfall was also low until late in the season, the technical number does not represent the season. The late season snowfall was disproportionately high altitude only.
● There were about 12 r*in freeze events, higher than normal. Several were just one week apart.
● Both opening day and closing day attendance are growing. There were over 2,000 people closing day (Moosetimate™), plus a fair number that just came to gawk and not ski. Most were pass holders, with Killington reporting 180 ticket sales, based on the $4,500 donation number announced.
● Given the weather challenges, Killington's skier visits were strong. The few big snow days had cars down the access road nearly to Glazebrook.
● Fridays continue to be strong as 3 day weekends seem to be the driver. Holiday traffic was not above average as conditions and trail counts were down.
● Spring was exceptional, lots of sunshine, even the forecast rainy days ended up being sprinkles. Strong depth on Superstar, although some years had more post closing snowpack than this year.
● The US was up 3.5% in skier visits, to an all time high, by contrast Vermont is 8% off it's all time high.

For the third season in a row, season passes surpassed day tickets in share of skier visits. Season pass holders made up 51.9% of visits nationally, with day tickets claiming 37.3% of visits (the balance is claimed by off-duty employees, complimentary products, etc.).

That means 10.8% of skier visits are comped. How many would have guessed that high?
This also means that leaving off comps, season pass holders account for 58.1% of revenue visits.
The effect of mega passes are showing up. It would be interesting to see how that varies across regions and some of the bigger resorts.

I would add that K started reporting season snowfall when they first opened [OK, makes sense].

But, somewhere about 50-60" into the season, the reigns wiped all of the natural out. So, there wasn't as much nat snow as one would think just looking at the season total.

[slatham]

While season to date snowfall is good info, the critical metric is snow DEPTH. I do not know of any ski area that reports natural snow depth. Stowe is the exception but it’s not their measurement stake. Please let me know if you know of an area that frequently and accurately reports snow depth.

[iRock]

Sugarbush reports average natural snow depth. Good resource.

[DES]

For a cool(ing) activity during this humidity, finally closed out my ski log from the season, for the first time since I started keeping log in 1996 just realized I didn't ski in Vermont (only at Cannon) so I didn't help VT business at all. There were some spectacular days this past winter but sure did miss out on the long stretches of continuous snow/below freezing temps.