- Vail Resorts was in the hot seat this month when a ski patrol strike at Park City disrupted vacations.
- For years, Vail’s flash purchases and high costs have drawn criticism from skiers and locals.
- Here’s how the company grew to become the biggest in skiing — and the nemesis of some skiers.
If you want to know how hated Vail Resorts is, just check out the lyrics to Grammy-nominated artist Noah Kahan’s “Paul Revere.”
“This place had a heartbeat in its time,” sings the native Vermonter. “Vail bought the mountains and nothing was the same.”
Or look around the parking lots at the ski giant’s various properties, which include Park City, Beaver Creek and Stowe, where cars are often adorned with “Vail Sucks” stickers.
Claims that the company has made skiing less accessible and more corporate were reinforced this month after a ski patrol strike shut down most of Park City, causing chaos for holidaymakers.
The company’s shares fell 6% amid news of the strike. But while the work stoppage is over, the company’s challenges are not. Since reaching a peak in 2021, Vail’s share price is now down more than 50%.
After two decades of acquisitions and partnerships, Vail Resorts owns or operates 42 ski resorts worldwide. The company is now facing reduced margins after a 2021 reduction in the price of its Epic Pass, which provides access to Vail’s mountain range, and a lack of bargains available, Chris Woronka told Business Insider. , an analyst at Deutsche Bank.
“The stock was ahead of the curve,” Woronka said. “The days of easily generated growth are somewhat behind the company.”
Meanwhile, it has earned a reputation among avid skiers as a place where crowds clutter the trails and lift lines and where grabbing a burger on the mountain can set you back $25.
A Vail Resorts spokesperson told BI that the company continually invests in its properties to improve the guest experience and make skiing more accessible.
“Vail Resorts has transformed the industry through unprecedented investments in employees and guests, made the sport more accessible to more people, and created stability for our resorts, employees and communities in the face of climate change,” the spokesperson said.
A skiing giant
Vail Resorts is the largest ski company in the world, giving its holders unlimited access to dozens of resorts around the world, including its luxury ship, Vail, located in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. During its 2024 fiscal year, which ended in July, 17.6 million skiers visited its mountains.
These visitors pay big bucks for the privilege of skiing at some of the most popular destinations: The Epic Pass had a starting price of $982 for the 2024-2025 season. A lift ticket in Park City alone can fetch up to about $300 per day.
A spokesperson for Vail Resorts said the company now has over 2 million pass holders.
Luke, a former Vail Resorts employee who asked to go by his first name to avoid professional fallout, told BI there are two main reasons Vail Resorts gets so much hate. First, it is buying resorts at an “alarming” rate. Second, as a result of this strategy, many skiers do not believe that the company invests enough in the quality and operation of each individual resort, instead relying on their “cash cow” properties.
“It feels like the last game is not necessarily to make a successful area, but to ultimately own the ski world,” Luke said. “So then it’s like if you’re skiing anywhere, you’re skiing Vail properties.”
Jaimie Nichols, a 35-year-old accountant from Florida who now lives in Denver, has been skiing with her family in Crested Butte, Colorado, since the early 2000s, when the resort was owned by the family. She recalled that lift tickets for children cost as much as their age — $8 for an 8-year-old — and a large base lodge where families could find affordable food options or use a microwave to heat packed lunches. Crested Butte itself is fondly called “Colorado’s Last Great Ski Town” because of its authentic mountain town atmosphere.
But Nichols said that since Vail Resorts bought the Crested Butte ski resort in 2018, it just hasn’t been the same.
“The persona of the resort changed,” she said. “It’s a completely different place.”
The Mueller family, which owned Crested Butte, previously said selling to Vail was a difficult decision.
“When you start looking 10, 20, 30 years down the road and what that means for a small ski company like us, and not being as funded as Vail, it just gets harder,” Erica Mueller said. for Powder magazine in 2018.
Jaimie Nichols and her dad skiing Crested Butte. Courtesy of Jaimie Nichols
When Vail takes over
Now, most of Vail Resorts’ properties are in the US, stretching from California, Utah and Colorado, through Midwest states like Wisconsin and Michigan, and as far northeast as Vermont and New Hampshire.
Its many acquisitions have turned the company, which was taken public by Apollo in the 1990s after the private equity shop bought it out of bankruptcy, into a financial giant in the hospitality space. It has a market cap of $6.7 billion and generated $2.9 billion in revenue and $230 million in profit in its fiscal year 2024. Investors were rewarded with $8.56 in dividends per share.
A common complaint from skiers and snowboarders when Vail takes over a resort is a more crowded mountain and long lift lines. The problem, Nichols said, is that when a resort is added to Vail’s Epic Pass, it becomes a destination. Epic Passport holders who previously wouldn’t have traveled more than four hours from Denver to Crested Butte now make the trip, as do out-of-state pass holders who vacation from it.
As a result, Nichols said area locals have fewer opportunities to ski at their mountain and, for families who aren’t season pass holders but want to ski once or twice a season, day passes become very expensive. expensive and out of reach.
Some of these problems are accompanied by factors that are affecting many cities in the West that don’t even have a ski resort: an increase in short-term rentals and transplants from cities moving to small towns in the telecommuting era, both of which have contributed to higher home prices and living costs.
Vail has said it is committed to reinvesting in the resorts it buys, estimating its capital investments in fiscal 2024 to be between $189 million and $194 million. At Whistler Blackcomb, for example, the company said it was replacing a four-person lift with a high-speed six-person lift. In Park City, the company said it is replacing an elevator with a 10-person gondola. He also said he planned to invest in snowmaking capabilities in Park City and Hunter Mountain.
A Vail Resorts spokesperson said the Epic Pass has also added stability to an industry that was previously “ruled by weather.”
“This means that in a good snow year, the industry will thrive, but in a low snow year, skiers and snowboarders will not choose to visit, and the ski resorts will suffer, along with the employees who worked there and the surrounding communities.” the spokesman said. “That meant the resorts couldn’t anticipate their business – so they weren’t investing in their infrastructure or their employees.”
When Vail introduced the Epic Pass in 2008, it was cheaper than many season passes offered at individual resorts.
The spokesperson also said that the company’s Epic Day Passes, which offer more flexibility than traditional lift tickets, are significantly discounted if they are purchased before the start of the season.
“By encouraging guests to purchase their skis and rides ahead of the season, we lock in revenue before the snow hits, which has allowed us to continually invest in our resorts, our employees and our communities and the environment, regardless of the weather,” said the spokesperson.
Vail Resorts has more than 40 ski resorts worldwide, including its namesake flagship in Colorado. Adventure_Photo/Getty Images
Many Vail critics still buy Epic Passes
The company’s biggest competitor is Alterra Mountain Company, which owns mountains like Steamboat and Deer Valley and is owned by private equity shop KSL and investment firm Henry Crown. Alterra runs the Ikon Pass, which is even more expensive than the Epic Pass, starting at $1,249.
The value of Epic and Ikon passes depends on how much you use them. It can be a good deal for people who ski often and want to visit different mountains — which is part of the argument companies use when they raise the price of almost everything else, including day passes, ski schools, rentals , and mountain dining and equipment.
In addition to offering a good deal with Epic Pass, Woronka, the Deutsche Bank analyst, said Vail also still has a strong brand name going for it and great assets.
“These are really scary mountains. It’s some of the best terrain out there,” he said. “They have this big, beautiful, expansive portfolio across the country.”
The problem is, “trying to take care of everyone and do it profitably can be a difficult proposition,” Woronka said.
With the luxury experience that Vail is selling, the increased crowds on the mountain may make guests feel a little less special, he said.
However, Vail’s dominance means that many who complain about the company still buy Epic Passes. It often makes the most financial sense for those who plan to ski most weekends, and if all their friends are doing the Epic Pass, they don’t want to miss out.
Luke, the former Vail employee, said running a ski operation is expensive and complicated. And, he added, there’s no denying that some of the resorts purchased by Vail might not have survived otherwise. But he said part of the reason for that is that the relatively low cost of the Epic Pass has attracted many to their local mountains.
“These mountains wouldn’t have survived,” Luke said.
But he also said he thinks competing with a big company like Vail is part of why some family-run resorts were struggling in the first place.
