Yahoo News Meet the Ski-Resort Behemoths Accused of Jacking Up Prices
Complaints against ski resorts are raining down on social media, particularly from those who don’t fly private: “Quit gouging on the tickets.” “Fuck Vail.” “You are killing the industry.” “They charge $300 per day for lift tickets to ski on mud.”
It’s a bad time to go skiing on a whim. At Breckenridge resort in the Colorado mountains, a same-day Saturday ticket clocks in at $279. At Beaver Creek, Vail, and Park City, it’s $299 per day—and that’s before parking, rentals, lodging, and food.
Those properties are among 41 owned by the publicly traded behemoth Vail Resorts, the dominant player in North American alpine adventures and a polarizing force among skiers and snowboarders. Together with its closest rival, the privately held Alterra Mountain Company, Vail has steadily raised prices on same-day lift tickets in the hopes of pushing skiers to buy season passes.
The two companies “are the Darth Vaders of the ski world,” Bert Rushford, a skier who lives in New Mexico, told The Daily Beast. “I don’t believe that they have any interest in any of the lip service that they spew about being conservationists and wanting to grow and continue to create sustainable skiing and blabady blabady blah. All they’re interested in is paying their shareholders.”
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Many regular skiers love Vail’s Epic Pass, which is usable at its resorts all-season for a set price. (Access is restricted on high-demand blackout dates, and prices fluctuate depending on when the passes are purchased. Often, they hover in the range of $1,000.) Alterra sells a similar product known as the Ikon Pass, with comparable terms and a slightly higher price.
“The value proposition is definitely there. It's not like they’re price gouging across the board,” said Jeffrey Stantial, an equity research director at Stifel Financial who covers the company. “What they’re trying to push you into is remarkable.”
Detractors, including Rushford, complain that pass holders have overcrowded mountains, while sky-high lift ticket prices have made the sport less accessible for casual skiers and beginners.
“I feel lucky to have a premier mountain near me that doesn’t charge as much… but I am disgusted at other mountains within an hour’s drive that seem to be happily pricing folks out of lift service,” Greg Camara, a building contractor in Northern Vermont, said of skyrocketing prices—though he didn’t single out Alterra or Vail by name.
“At what point do parents stop starting their kids off at the mountain?” he continued. “It seems like that is happening already. To me, the increased prices are a sure sign of the end of either the middle class, or the middle class of skiing.”
Vail and Alterra did not respond to requests for comment.
Skiing and snowboarding have always been a “little bit of a walled garden,” Stantial said understatedly, but the sports are only growing more exclusive. A report compiled by the National Ski Areas Association found that, during the 2013-2014 season, 56 percent of skiers came from households with at least $100,000 in annual income. By the 2022-2023 season, that figure had climbed to 69 percent. The report also noted that the median skier is getting older.
Vail acknowledges its role in the price increases. In the risk factors section of its annual report, the company conceded that “we charge some of the highest prices for single day lift tickets and ancillary services in the ski industry.”
The company said it offers a variety of ways for customers to save, including a prepaid Epic Day Pass, discounts for booking in advance, and reduced-cost “buddy tickets” that can be used when skiing with Epic Pass holders.
Stantial credits Vail chairman Rob Katz with pioneering the Epic Pass in 2008; the strategy helped the company guarantee much of its revenue upfront in case its resorts suffered from disappointing snowfall. Skiers were also incentivized to stick with Vail’s properties rather than bounce around.
Paul Golding, an analyst at Macquarie who also covers Vail, explained that the new system made it easier for the firm to market to customers by creating a database of repeat buyers. (Macquarie has a neutral rating on Vail’s stock, in part because its services are so expensive.)
Alterra unveiled the Ikon Pass a decade later. “A couple of different parties in this industry”—private equity firm KSL Capital Partners and members of the Crown family—came together after determining “we're getting our lunch eaten by Vail,” Stantial said.
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Both companies, Vail in particular, have bought up other resorts in recent years; Alterra announced this month that it has agreed to buy Arapahoe Basin in Colorado. According to Golding, there is such limited inventory left in North America (that wouldn’t raise antitrust concerns) that Vail has been forced to look overseas for new targets. It already owns one asset in Switzerland and three in Australia.
“They’re just buying up real estate properties left, right, and center,” said James Finklea, 42, who works in finance in Connecticut. “And trust me, they’re not catering to your average family of four in the states of Vermont or New Hampshire. These are high rollers coming up out of New York City; Boston; Hartford; Springfield, Massachusetts; Albany, New York. These are people that can afford second or third homes whose kids are in boarding school.”
Online forums are filled with loyal Epic and Ikon Pass users thrilled with the product. Still, an equally vocal contingent of longtime skiers doesn’t like the new business model.
“For me, they’re just killing the whole vibe,” said John Weeks, a musician who sells windows and siding in Colorado. “It’s becoming way too corporate, it’s cookie cutter and it's really, really expensive.” He calls Alterra and Vail the “Death Star companies.”
“Obviously,” he noted, “it's great for these small mom-and-pop people that want to unload their real estate assets… They get a shitload of money.”
Rushford waxed nostalgic about the old system of ownership, when resorts were founded by families “that lived at the bottom of the hill and had no indoor plumbing, and they managed to get a lift going… All of those people did it because they loved skiing. They loved the mountains. They aren’t in love with money.”
“I don’t want to sound like I’m an old fart or anything,” he said, “but ski areas survived for decades without all of this.”
Rushford griped about the huge traffic jams caused by Vail and Alterra pass holders, and by neophyte skiers drawn to mountains far out of their skill set who are “flying out of control.”
Finklea added that, as a kid, he and his friends would “scoff” at western ski resorts charging upwards of $100 per day. Now, at the Vail-owned Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont, lift ticket prices are pushing $200. “Your average family of four is priced out of skiing in their home state. It’s insane,” he said. “Absolutely nuts.”
Smaller ski operators—those that are left—are scrambling to compete with the giants. The Indy Pass, composed of more than 180 independent resorts in North America, Europe, and Japan, gives customers access to two days of skiing at each site.
Even more niche, some nonprofit groups are trying to return ski mountain ownership to their communities, like at Cuchara Mountain Park in Colorado.
“Our entire goal is to make skiing affordable to the area,” said Gavin Clary, who works on the snowmaking and mountain maintenance crew. It’s still early days, and the economic viability of the approach isn’t yet proven, but Clary is committed.
“I’d rather see models that aren't soulless corporations for sure,” he said. “[A] community run nonprofit cares more about the mountain and community than wringing every bit of profit out that they can.”
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