Captain Hafski wrote:FWIW: Don't forget that Killington dropped it's season pass price for us (yes, I know, not for the blackout pass herbs) last year partly in response to similar things as the IKON pass (e.g., the Max Pass).
That put a net $150 or so in my pocket last year.
I suspect the K pass price will remain lower than it was this year as well.
Indeed. The Killington pass and Pico pass price points are reasonable.
Let’s be honest too... if the Max Pass had never existed, this Ikon pass would have come out and it would have just seemed like an interesting product not geared towards a Killington regular. I think people are a bit put off as it feels like a step down from being able to do the Max Pass add on.
How is $899 at Killington for unlimited skiing at one resort a reasonable price point, when $899 at IKON gets you unlimited skiing at 12 different resorts PLUS 42 more days at 13 additional resorts? The IKON pass, a POWDR-participating-resort pass, provides mountain access to POWDR season pass holders in Colorado orders of magnitude greater than the access a season pass for POWDR season pass holders in Vermont gets you; for the same price. It's abundantly clear what POWDR thinks of it's Killington customer base...FU.
Never thought the MAX pass or add-on was a deal, and never was interested. Your assumptions in that regard are wholly off base; at least on my end. If Copper and Eldora were 7 days each, I'd have no gripe. But this is simply another short-sighted, ego-driven, asinine move by POWDR upper management trying to compete in an industry where they are completely outwitted. I've complained about POWDR before AND drank the Kool-Aid for the great local management and on hill effort at K, but the preferential treatment for some resorts in the POWDR portfolio at the expense of others is absolutely fvcking sickening.
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Captain Hafski wrote:FWIW: Don't forget that Killington dropped it's season pass price for us (yes, I know, not for the blackout pass herbs) last year partly in response to similar things as the IKON pass (e.g., the Max Pass).
That put a net $150 or so in my pocket last year.
I suspect the K pass price will remain lower than it was this year as well.
Indeed. The Killington pass and Pico pass price points are reasonable.
Let’s be honest too... if the Max Pass had never existed, this Ikon pass would have come out and it would have just seemed like an interesting product not geared towards a Killington regular. I think people are a bit put off as it feels like a step down from being able to do the Max Pass add on.
How is $899 at Killington for unlimited skiing at one resort a reasonable price point, when $899 at IKON gets you unlimited skiing at 12 different resorts PLUS 42 more days at 13 additional resorts? The IKON pass, a POWDR-participating-resort pass, provides mountain access to POWDR season pass holders in Colorado orders of magnitude greater than the access a season pass for POWDR season pass holders in Vermont gets you; for the same price. It's abundantly clear what POWDR thinks of it's Killington customer base...FU.
Never thought the MAX pass or add-on was a deal, and never was interested. Your assumptions in that regard are wholly off base; at least on my end. If Copper and Eldora were 7 days each, I'd have no gripe. But this is simply another short-sighted, ego-driven, asinine move by POWDR upper management trying to compete in an industry where they are completely outwitted. I've complained about POWDR before AND drank the Kool-Aid for the great local management and on hill effort at K, but the preferential treatment for some resorts in the POWDR portfolio at the expense of others is absolutely fvcking sickening.
with the bike park add on I get year round unlimited access to whatever lifts are running for about 100 bux a month...that works for me...
K has no real need to grow its weekend business which is what these "inclusive" passes do...
prime weekends, powder days, only game in town/most open terrain etc bring out those passholders in addition to an increase in locals, K passholders and daytickets combining to make the heaviest traffic weekends that much worse...
meanwhile midweek even last week during presidents week it was ski on and have the trail virtually to yourself...
I don;t have an answer for that but passes that include other mtns ain't it...
mach es sehr schnell
'exponential reciprocation'- The practice of always giving back more than you take....
Captain Hafski wrote:FWIW: Don't forget that Killington dropped it's season pass price for us (yes, I know, not for the blackout pass herbs) last year partly in response to similar things as the IKON pass (e.g., the Max Pass).
That put a net $150 or so in my pocket last year.
I suspect the K pass price will remain lower than it was this year as well.
Indeed. The Killington pass and Pico pass price points are reasonable.
Let’s be honest too... if the Max Pass had never existed, this Ikon pass would have come out and it would have just seemed like an interesting product not geared towards a Killington regular. I think people are a bit put off as it feels like a step down from being able to do the Max Pass add on.
How is $899 at Killington for unlimited skiing at one resort a reasonable price point, when $899 at IKON gets you unlimited skiing at 12 different resorts PLUS 42 more days at 13 additional resorts? The IKON pass, a POWDR-participating-resort pass, provides mountain access to POWDR season pass holders in Colorado orders of magnitude greater than the access a season pass for POWDR season pass holders in Vermont gets you; for the same price. It's abundantly clear what POWDR thinks of it's Killington customer base...FU.
Never thought the MAX pass or add-on was a deal, and never was interested. Your assumptions in that regard are wholly off base; at least on my end. If Copper and Eldora were 7 days each, I'd have no gripe. But this is simply another short-sighted, ego-driven, asinine move by POWDR upper management trying to compete in an industry where they are completely outwitted. I've complained about POWDR before AND drank the Kool-Aid for the great local management and on hill effort at K, but the preferential treatment for some resorts in the POWDR portfolio at the expense of others is absolutely fvcking sickening.
The Killington and Pico pass prices are in line with other local competition options and are thus reasonable imo. Would it be nice if Killington and Pico were both included in the Ikon pass as unlimited options? Sure. However that obviously did not fit into the New England business model.
IMO, Alterra is in the drivers seat on this and I can see why they feel they would need Copper as unlimited if they hope to compete at all with the epic pass in Colorado. I can also see why they would not want another unlimited area in New England that would compete with Stratton.
If there were an add on option as there was with the max pass I might be interested, otherwise the ikon pass does nothing for me.
Part of this is on Powdr, and part of it is also on Alterra.
Powdr has a massive favoritism towards the mountains that compete with Vail. Always has always will. I get the sense that Vail at least tries to spread the wealth when it comes to capital improvements, and everywhere has the same pass and same pass benefits. Boyne has invested in the lifts at just about all their mountains and has plans to just about everywhere they own. And Intrawest in their later years didn't invest in any of their resorts.
We'll see how Alterra works but I'm concerned they're going to do the same thing as Powdr with favoritism towards the resorts that directly compete with Vail.
With the Ikon Pass, Alterra should've just made all their own resorts unlimited on both passes and the partner resorts 5 days with blackouts on the base version and 7 days with no blackouts on the full version. Simple consistent pass structure. That's pretty much exactly what Vail does. Sure there'd be some haters, it would be the same thing applied over all the resorts. Since they tried to nickel and dime and only give the good prices to passholders at resorts that compete with Vail, everyone else sees that and is pissed. Particularly, Mammoth and Stratton passholders were the most angry as they aren't unlimited with the 600 dollar base version and there's no good reason for that to be the case other than to make them pay more because they can't defect to the Epic Pass.
If Powdr was going to get in on this, they should have made all their resorts unlimited or not unlimited to once again be consistent. But just like Alterra, they decided that only the resorts that compete with Vail are going to get the best prices and everyone else gets to subsidize them.
snoloco wrote:Part of this is on Powdr, and part of it is also on Alterra.
Powdr has a massive favoritism towards the mountains that compete with Vail. Always has always will. I get the sense that Vail at least tries to spread the wealth when it comes to capital improvements, and everywhere has the same pass and same pass benefits. Boyne has invested in the lifts at just about all their mountains and has plans to just about everywhere they own. And Intrawest in their later years didn't invest in any of their resorts.
We'll see how Alterra works but I'm concerned they're going to do the same thing as Powdr with favoritism towards the resorts that directly compete with Vail.
With the Ikon Pass, Alterra should've just made all their own resorts unlimited on both passes and the partner resorts 5 days with blackouts on the base version and 7 days with no blackouts on the full version. Simple consistent pass structure. That's pretty much exactly what Vail does. Sure there'd be some haters, it would be the same thing applied over all the resorts. Since they tried to nickel and dime and only give the good prices to passholders at resorts that compete with Vail, everyone else sees that and is pissed. Particularly, Mammoth and Stratton passholders were the most angry as they aren't unlimited with the 600 dollar base version and there's no good reason for that to be the case other than to make them pay more because they can't defect to the Epic Pass.
If Powdr was going to get in on this, they should have made all their resorts unlimited or not unlimited to once again be consistent. But just like Alterra, they decided that only the resorts that compete with Vail are going to get the best prices and everyone else gets to subsidize them.
Killington must be kicking a ton of cash back to UT - or these morons would have dumped it by now.
Hopefully they forget to sign something and we get picked up by a different faceless, useless conglomerate that does not give a sh*t about us BUT PUTS IN A COUPLE NEW LIFTS AND A LODGE THAT HAS A FEW WINDOWS AND A DECENT BATHROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Killington must be kicking a ton of cash back to UT - or these morons would have dumped it by now.
Hopefully they forget to sign something and we get picked up by a different faceless, useless conglomerate that does not give a sh*t about us BUT PUTS IN A COUPLE NEW LIFTS AND A LODGE THAT HAS A FEW WINDOWS AND A DECENT BATHROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why would they put money into the place.
Would it increase pass/tickets sales to the point where they could recoup the outlay.
Beware of fools & trolls here, they lurk everywhere.
Killington must be kicking a ton of cash back to UT - or these morons would have dumped it by now.
Hopefully they forget to sign something and we get picked up by a different faceless, useless conglomerate that does not give a sh*t about us BUT PUTS IN A COUPLE NEW LIFTS AND A LODGE THAT HAS A FEW WINDOWS AND A DECENT BATHROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's in Killington's best interest to get this resolved before it spirals out of control. A 'smooth things over blog post' from Mike isn't going to cut it this time...
Using the Ikon pass prices and assuming a Killington/Pico pass is 900 dollars, a Killington skier has to pay 1500 dollars for unlimited access to their home mountain, plus whatever is offered on the Ikon Pass, while a Copper or Eldora passholder get the same thing for only 600 dollars. That's 2.5 times more that the Killington skier has to pay. Total idiocy!! This pass should be called the Ikonic fail pass. I hope any Copper and Eldora skiers are very appreciative that Killington skiers are paying for their pass prices to be so artificially low. My guess is no Killington skiers will ever visit an Alterra resort period since they were the ones that screwed them like this.
snoloco wrote:Using the Ikon pass prices and assuming a Killington/Pico pass is 900 dollars, a Killington skier has to pay 1500 dollars for unlimited access to their home mountain, plus whatever is offered on the Ikon Pass, while a Copper or Eldora passholder get the same thing for only 600 dollars. That's 2.5 times more that the Killington skier has to pay. Total idiocy!! This pass should be called the Ikonic fail pass. I hope any Copper and Eldora skiers are very appreciative that Killington skiers are paying for their pass prices to be so artificially low. My guess is no Killington skiers will ever visit an Alterra resort period since they were the ones that screwed them like this.
Similar argument with the Beast Pass vs the College Pass.
Beware of fools & trolls here, they lurk everywhere.
snoloco wrote:Using the Ikon pass prices and assuming a Killington/Pico pass is 900 dollars, a Killington skier has to pay 1500 dollars for unlimited access to their home mountain, plus whatever is offered on the Ikon Pass, while a Copper or Eldora passholder get the same thing for only 600 dollars. That's 2.5 times more that the Killington skier has to pay. Total idiocy!! This pass should be called the Ikonic fail pass. I hope any Copper and Eldora skiers are very appreciative that Killington skiers are paying for their pass prices to be so artificially low. My guess is no Killington skiers will ever visit an Alterra resort period since they were the ones that screwed them like this.
Uh, how many Colorado skiers come to Killington for a week? Or how about those Texans, are they flying to Vermont?
This has been going on since the very first Epic pass, and Denver area skiers have been reaping the rewards and subsidy ever since. Suck it up, while the competing multi mountain passes will fine tune themselves, the price disparity isn't going away anytime soon. (BTW, our parking is still free)
If we could be a fly on the wall of the planning meeting - I bet we would see a bunch of charts that run all the options that we have laid out here, plus a few more that we might have overlooked.
Each chart would have an output that shows expected revenues as a result of that particular pass pricing plan. If you were at the helm, which plan would you put into effect? The plan that yields the max cash flow at Killington, or something that cuts cash flow 10% or 20%? Sure, you can claim that a certain plan MIGHT result in increases for attendance/food/beverage, but would you take that cash cut in HOPES of achieving unknown benefits? I would not. To make things worse, you have to factor in the "wait and see" mentality. Lets see what happens in the marketplace, and join the flock in the future. Its all about how much risk you are comfortable with. Remember what happens to cash flow in a lean weather season, and you will likely arrive at the same conclusions.
So if the final answer is to maintain the existing pass & pricing structure, then the next step is to plan for how to increase customer traffic within the existing business model. Once again, there is unused weekend capacity at Killington with the existing lift system. K used to have way more visits with a lot less uphill capacity per hour. There is also a huge unused capacity midweek. The cconstraints on midweek attendance are way beyond the control of POWDR. How many of us would come to ski midweek if it were really cheap? Not many. Why? We have season passes now so midweek skiing is free, and most of us go to work M-F and will ski midweek days no more and no less.
With unused capacity comes the detractors of poor lifts, snowmaking capacity that no longer activates after negative weather events, poor parking, poor lodges. The attractors are the natural terrain advantage, natural weather advantage, and slightly improved service levels. On my list of three main attractors, two have been there since K opened. I do not think there will be a surge in weekend or weekday attendance simply because a liftie smiles at you in spanish. But those detractors need to get fixed. What drives improvements? Increasing revenues. Cutting pass prices? Strong risk of decreasing revenues.
POWDR does not need any excuses for limiting capital into K. They manage to strangle K quite well as it is. So lets enjoy the $900 seasons while we have them. Every pass that would be sold with a western free skiing option would drain revenues out of K with little or no hope for replenishment.
