Vail CEO: The ‘Fat Years’ Are Over
By Rocky Thompson on April 3rd, 2009
Vail’s CEO says that ski resorts need to start looking at ways to give something back to the customers who indulged in their $70 daily lift tickets and $30 hotdog lunches for the last ten years.
“Somebody asked me to please say something optimistic today,” Katz said at the start of his presentation. “The only thing I can say that’s optimistic is that this season is almost over,” he said, only partly in jest.
It’s been a bad year for almost everyone, and resorts in the west are seeing how easy it is for families to save money by spending less time at insanely expensive resorts. Not only that, but the retail spots at places like Vail get hit even worse since no one wants to pay their exorbitant retail shop prices when they can get gear here for so much less (and with better customer service).
via GetOutdoors
Wow, nice of Katz to say a whole lot of obvious nothing. Obviously one of the top 3 overpriced, lavishly over-the-top ski resorts is feeling the crunch. “Give something back to consumers”, “value for money”, “moral readjustment” and “close-to-nature experiences”?! What a load of meaningless BS. A real non-story. In fact the Epic pass said more than this entire Summit Daily article. Hopefully, we’ll see more deals like that.
$70? What a deal!! I think their window prices were almost $100 this year. Absurd.
Bought the Epic pass this year so I got to spend serious time at Vail when I was on vacation. Also, spent a couple of days at Beaver Creek. If you think Vail’s insanely snobbish, visit B.C. Even the moose there wears furs.
Still, great powder on two different trips.
beautiful, seemless, shameless plug! 5 stars!
Let all the “Vails” go under! They are blemishes on an otherwise great sport!
$95 for a day of crowded flat terrain? $18 burgers? Vail should have failed years ago!
boycott resorts.
Jeez, thats a funny statement from Vail!… They are king of expensive!!
http://www.mountainfreshblog.com
With $90+ lift tickets and $20 lunches… no shit. Fuck you, Vail, I’m never going back.
I will stick with my occasional ski trips to Austria, it is actually cheaper for me to go there (from Calgary)& ski, than to go to Any Ski Town USA (except maybe Whitefish). And I have yet to meet a snobbish Austrian. All they care about is finding fun people to have a mid-mountain schnapps with.