![]() A skier enjoys the powder in Game Creek Bowl on Sunday, March 3. Vail ski area harvested 26 inches of snow in two days over the first weekend in March. In fiscal 2018, the company reported that 47 percent of its lift revenue came from Epic Pass skiers, but the guests using day lift tickets skied only, on average, 2.3 days during the 2017-18 ski season. Katz said while the Epic Pass has done a good job of capturing visitors who plan to ski five or more days, the daily lift ticket prices have triggered a decline in visits for just a day or a weekend. Now, pass revenue rolls in long before the season begins, enabling Vail Resorts - now a stable of 20 owned ski areas including its recent acquisitions of Australia’s Falls Creek and Hotham ski areas - to invest without relying on hordes of skiers chasing hit-or-miss powder. Those passes have transformed the resort industry, which less than a dozen years ago was hoping for snow to lure skiers whose spending would support investment the following season. So it’s safe to assume that Ikon and Epic-passed skiers accessing about 80 of the world’s top ski resorts bought about 1.2 million season passes. Alterra, a privately held company that owns 14 ski destinations but doesn’t release stats like the publicly traded Vail Resorts, said it sold more than 250,000 Ikon Passes in its debut season, which corralled about two dozen additional destinations as pass partners. There were about 100,000 $99 Epic Pass for military veterans and their families in that total as well. ![]() Vail Resorts sold more than 925,000 Epic Passes for 2018-19, a combination of the full unrestricted Epic Pass, the Epic Local Pass that limits access to some resorts, and its four-day and seven-day passes. “There has been this critique over the years saying ‘Yeah this (Epic Pass) is great for the enthusiast.’ But for the first-time skier, for the infrequent skier, the occasional skier, somebody who just wants to kind of dabble … we haven’t really had a product for that person,” Katz said. Vail ski area’s 2018-19 day lift tickets peaked at $209 over the Christmas holiday. Starting at $106 for a one-day restricted pass - meaning it can’t be used over major holidays - and $125 for an unrestricted day pass, the new Epic Day Pass targets skiers who maybe don’t want to commit $939 for a 2019-20 Epic Pass, but also balk at Vail’s day lift ticket price, which peaked at $209 over Christmas. The new Epic Day Pass for next season gives skiers a chance to pre-purchase one-to-seven days of skiing for prices that are about half the walk-up ticket price at most Vail-owned ski areas. While this could be seen as yet another missive in the Epic-versus-Ikon season pass brawl that is transforming the resort industry, Katz said the Epic Day Pass comes from years of ticket-window numbers showing a decline in visits by day-ticket buyers who, while not skiing entire seasons, still are important to the resort business. So at this point there is really no reason - as long as you can plan ahead a little bit - that you can’t be skiing for around $100,” said Vail Resorts chief Rob Katz, who 11 years ago created the Epic Pass that stabilized the resort industry’s notoriously seasonal revenue flow by encouraging skiers to buy discounted season passes long before the lifts began turning. “We have really, I think, taken the window lift ticket out of the picture. The “Epic for Everyone” offers pre-purchased lift tickets for as low as $89 a day, extending to infrequent skiers the same discounts delivered to Epic Pass buyers who paid as much as $900 this season to ski as many days as they want. ![]() Vail Resorts on Tuesday dropped a new product that the resort conglomerate hopes will end the persistent argument that skiing is too expensive.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |