Christmas down at Killington

[Geoff]

From the newspaper of record:

Skier visits at Killington Resort – the largest ski area in the East — were down slightly from the holiday week a year ago, but were "off the charts" at Pico, its sister resort next door, Killington spokesman Tom Horrocks said Monday.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20 ... 003/NEWS02


Queue Jersey guy to critique this quote. I'm scratching my head at the math:

For the season, skier visits at Killington are running behind a year ago, but Horrocks said the resort "is quickly making up the difference."

Killington was only open 8 days in November and was closed Thanksgiving. They were down at Christmas. You don't "make up the difference" in January.

[skiadikt]

interesting that it was down because the skiing was so much better this year. last year was pretty awful.

[Herringbone]

interesting that it was down because the skiing was so much better this year. last year was pretty awful.

wasnt there a 3 foot dump during xmas 2008?

[Geoff]

interesting that it was down because the skiing was so much better this year. last year was pretty awful.

wasnt there a 3 foot dump during xmas 2008?

No. That was a few days before Christmas. It did the usual thaw thing for Christmas.

[SnoBrdr]

From the newspaper of record:

Skier visits at Killington Resort – the largest ski area in the East — were down slightly from the holiday week a year ago, but were "off the charts" at Pico, its sister resort next door, Killington spokesman Tom Horrocks said Monday.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20 ... 003/NEWS02


Queue Jersey guy to critique this quote. I'm scratching my head at the math:

For the season, skier visits at Killington are running behind a year ago, but Horrocks said the resort "is quickly making up the difference."

Killington was only open 8 days in November and was closed Thanksgiving. They were down at Christmas. You don't "make up the difference" in January.

Article also said Okemo was also down 12% from what they expected.

[Geoff]

Article also said Okemo was also down 12% from what they expected.

Nope. They report "slightly up".

Here is the quote:

At Okemo Mountain Resort, skier visits for the holiday week were slightly more than last year," but 12 percent above what the Ludlow resort had projected, said Okemo spokeswoman Bonnie MacPherson.

At this point, I'm not sure what Killington can do to get the people to come back. As Rogman said a couple of years ago, he had ever heard of a business that intentionally went out to lose market share. "The Beast" image doesn't exactly market well to the full price Christmas week crowd. I figure that marketing campain will be very short-lived. I was encouraged to see that they were looking at the interconnect as a way to attract people. If the businesses on the Access Road start going under, the place could lose critical mass.

[trtaylor]

Did notice K is getting aggressive with Deal Grabber deals again.

[boston_e]

Interesting (but not surprising to me) that business was up at Pico.

$57 for a full day lift ticket is a big difference from $82 if you are bringing a family of 4 for the week. (And I don't even know if the difference is greater by going with some of the Pico cards etc that were available).

I'm sure Christmas / new years week is heavy on families as well which Pico should definitely appeal to. Big enough to give the parents some "big mountain" feel, but small enough so that your 12 year old who went off to ski on his own does not end up at Bear Mountain lodge at the end of the day, when he was supposed to go back to Rams Head.

[skiingsnow]

Last season the "holiday week" was one day longer which should have added somewhere around 10 to 15 thousand more visits, so losing a day this season compared to last is probably why visits were down slightly. The first weekend had freezing r*in and mix, the second weekend very cold and very windy, so that didn't help... I know I did my regular parking lot inspections while I was blacked out and things seemed busier than last season...

[Geoff]

Last season the "holiday week" was one day longer which should have added somewhere around 10 to 15 thousand more visits, so losing a day this season compared to last is probably why visits were down slightly. The first weekend had freezing r*in and mix, the second weekend very cold and very windy, so that didn't help... I know I did my regular parking lot inspections while I was blacked out and things seemed busier than last season...

Skippy, Killington ran promotional discounts this year at Christmas. I've been skiing Killington since the early 1980's. That's the first time I've ever seen the resort do that. What matters is dollars in the cash register, not cars in the parking lot. Besides, the busiest day only had cars halfway down the Access Road and the Bear lot was maybe 1/3 full. By historical standards, the holiday was a disaster.

[SnoBrdr]

Last season the "holiday week" was one day longer which should have added somewhere around 10 to 15 thousand more visits, so losing a day this season compared to last is probably why visits were down slightly. The first weekend had freezing r*in and mix, the second weekend very cold and very windy, so that didn't help... I know I did my regular parking lot inspections while I was blacked out and things seemed busier than last season...

Skippy, Killington ran promotional discounts this year at Christmas. I've been skiing Killington since the early 1980's. That's the first time I've ever seen the resort do that. What matters is dollars in the cash register, not cars in the parking lot. Besides, the busiest day only had cars halfway down the Access Road and the Bear lot was maybe 1/3 full. By historical standards, the holiday was a disaster.

Without seeing their balance sheet, how can you say it was a disaster?

Disaster maybe for the restaurants. Many were half filled from what I saw.

But then again we would still have to count receipts.

[skiadikt]

Last season the "holiday week" was one day longer which should have added somewhere around 10 to 15 thousand more visits, so losing a day this season compared to last is probably why visits were down slightly. The first weekend had freezing r*in and mix, the second weekend very cold and very windy, so that didn't help... I know I did my regular parking lot inspections while I was blacked out and things seemed busier than last season...

damn tom better watch his back. even he didn't fall back on the one day longer argument (and neither did anyone else). and the shortened week didn't bother okemo & ascutney who were up or smuggs who is now about even with last year. as for the weather, last year was terrible with r*in xmas eve followed by spring conditions before the deep freeze moved in. last new years day was vitually impossible to ski so cold & windy. this year weather started out as crap but we then wound up w/ 40" for the week. only real brutal day was sunday which is a travel day for many folks.

i would like to see them do better. don't know what the prob is. if you want to see crowded check out moose's mt snow report. agree w/geoff that the "beast" marketing is problematic. the front page at k.com is awful. at least show people skiing ...

[Atomic1]

Article also said Okemo was also down 12% from what they expected.

Nope. They report "slightly up".

Here is the quote:

At Okemo Mountain Resort, skier visits for the holiday week were slightly more than last year," but 12 percent above what the Ludlow resort had projected, said Okemo spokeswoman Bonnie MacPherson.

At this point, I'm not sure what Killington can do to get the people to come back. As Rogman said a couple of years ago, he had ever heard of a business that intentionally went out to lose market share. "The Beast" image doesn't exactly market well to the full price Christmas week crowd. I figure that marketing campain will be very short-lived. I was encouraged to see that they were looking at the interconnect as a way to attract people. If the businesses on the Access Road start going under, the place could lose critical mass.

NO BRAINER of what Killington can do to increase skier visits, LOWER THE COST OF KIDS SEASON PASS or Raise the Ages. Right now isn't it like 800 bucks for a 5 year old season pass. Thats a turn off for young parents looking for a place to go and spend some jingle.

[Herringbone]

interesting that it was down because the skiing was so much better this year. last year was pretty awful.

wasnt there a 3 foot dump during xmas 2008?

No. That was a few days before Christmas. It did the usual thaw thing for Christmas.

im an idiot i could have come up for that dump! i can still remember driving south on the wantagh pky & seeing an suv with a snowboard on top heading north. the next day they got the dump. i didnt make that mistake twice last season.

[laseranimal]

The real problem is that for 2 years Powdr/Killington had been training their customers to ski elsewhere.....Its going to take at LEAST 2-3 years to get some of them back.


I really think one of the dumbest moves was not trying to hang on to a piece of the Bronze passholder market. YES they were cheap, yes they weren't as "valuable" as a full price customer, and yes the only reason ASC was running the ALL-4-ONE pass was to have cash to survive. But damnit they were a BIG slice of the market that Killington had locked up. When you killed the cheap pass and basically ran them out of town, a lot of those people simply found better deals elsewhere. You're still paying for it because you did NOTHING to entice those folks to stay at Killington as either passholders or full fare skiers. A simple one time "loyalty" bonus of discounting Bronze Passholders $50-$100 off the cost of the new higher priced passes MIGHT have kept some folks the next year and MAYBE you converted them to full pass price the next season.

It absolutely kills me that smart people looked at the layout of Killington and thought, hey I bet we can run this place on low volume and high margins. If you want every part of the mountain open you've got to be spinning a MINIMUM of 8 lifts(and I'm not even counting the magic carpets). We saw what a disaster closing lodges midweek was, so those have to be staffed and run. Then there's the massive amounts of terrain snowmaking and grooming that needs to be done to keep trails up and running. I'm not even going to touch the season length as its been beat to death

Going forward I think Killington's in a tough spot, the games changed completely. The old way of doing things was to throw up a ton of real estate for the boomers to buy and use the massive profits to subsidize the skiing, instead of growing your own skiers, it was easier to steal them from the other hills by opening faster lifts and more terrain. I'm not convinced that everything's changed, but there's no way that anyones going to build a massively successful base village at Killington any time soon. The interconnect idea is a nice pipe dream, but its kind of silly to think that an interconnect is going to be built with Pico only running Thursday-Monday.