Coronavirus and Skiing

[snoloco]

I get the lodging and F&B being down significantly. What I don't get is the paid skier visits being down by 40 percent.
I heard about crazy lines and busier than usual weekdays. Is that because the people skiing were skiing on season passes? People who could work remotely moving to their second homes in VT and skiing more including weekdays?
Could it be that some areas like Jay that rely on Canadian skiers were down more and some like Mount Snow were maybe even up on skier visits?

Weekend capacity restrictions and people having more flexibility resulted in much greater numbers on weekdays. I expect that many of those people will be back to weekends next year, but certainly some will not flip back, which will be one of the few good things to come from the pandemic. The ski industry has been trying to increase weekday visits for decades.

 

[witch hobble]

Over where I ski, upside down VT, we had some “crazy lines” on a few days during January (skiing was awesome, who can blame them?) but it was largely due to reduced lift capacity, so lines appeared long due to lots of singles and doubles being loaded on quad chairs. No singles line. At Cannon they did not run the tram at all this year, which spreads people around, and transports people from the base of one good pod to the summit of the mountain without having to cycle through the main base area. So logistics were different and created some “peak time” crowding.

Side note: didn’t really miss the lodge much this year. Did actually miss chairlift mingling. I ski solo midweek a decent amount. There is the occasional cringey interaction, but I often enjoy chatting up fellow skiers on the lift. I can count on one hand the number of people I rode a lift with this year.

 

[snoloco]

I can't speak for Cannon, but while there were some lifts where the lines were much longer, this was the exception, rather than the norm. The extra spacing made lines look longer than they really were, and if the queue was full to the same amount, you probably waited the same amount of time.

I'm going to use Killington's bubble chair as an example. It has a front row style queue with a staff member up front directing people when to come out. In normal times, there were 6 lines for groups, plus two singles lines. This year, they had the same 6 group lines with spacing between, but only 1 singles line.

In normal times, if there were repeated 2's and 3's, they'd move up and make their own larger groups. This year, they stayed apart as their own groups. If the line was back to the end of the queue, there were the same number of groups in front of you as there would've been in previous years. It's just that those groups were smaller. The waiting time however would've been the same.

I noticed that gondolas, and lifts that function as overflow to gondolas tended to have the biggest increase in waiting times. This was due to the fact that gondola capacity was so extremely limited with cabins built for 8 sometimes going up with just 1, making the lines longer. People would seek the alternate lift either because the line was too long, or because they didn't want to take the gondola at all due to covid concerns. The most extreme case of this was Gore's Adirondack Express, but there were certainly others.

 

[Harvey]

What I don't get is the paid skier visits being down by 40 percent.

I don't think this was true in NY. I guess we will see.

 

[tirolski]

My guess is close to normal for NY skier visits. Definitely busier midweek. Ski Club trips on buses were most likely non existent though, so there’s that.

 

[sig]

Attn @sig

Vail Resorts Visits Strong, But Revenues Decline - Ski Area Management

SAM Magazine—Broomfield, Colo., March 15, 2021—Vail Resorts (VR) saw year-over-year business levels improve during January and February, with season-to-date visits down 8.2 percent through March 7 compared to the prior year. Lift revenues declined 8.9 percent for the period, while ski school,...

www.saminfo.com

interesting to see revenue stream impact beyond ticket sales. Lessons, $9 beers and food really add up. Weather and the holiday periods really affect the bottom line. Nothing new there. No doubt this was the year to be a season pass holder. Like we saw on golf courses last year, midweek visits were up. This really does not work for me and cramps my style. I am really not built for a pandemic. Closing of bars and people crowding my style on the golf courses and ski resorts during the week. Hopefully this is behind us.

 

[Campgottagopee]

Definitely busier midweek

I haven't seen GP's midweek parking clear out to the Stavlos in years. Fogetabout the weekend crowds -- yikes!

 

[tirolski]

interesting to see revenue stream impact beyond ticket sales...No doubt this was the year to be a season pass holder. Like we saw on golf courses last year, midweek visits were up. This really does not work for me and cramps my style... Closing of bars and people crowding my style on the golf courses and ski resorts during the week.

Golf course has record number of members this year and still has a waiting list, even with an initiation fee and with plenty other courses around. Place was busy last Friday & Saturday but we still played in 4 hours. Haven’t been inside the clubhouse yet, other than the pro shop, as the patio/porch is a nice place for a pint and sammich.

 

[witch hobble]

I can't speak for Cannon, but while there were some lifts where the lines were much longer, this was the exception, rather than the norm. The extra spacing made lines look longer than they really were, and if the queue was full to the same amount, you probably waited the same amount of time.

I'm going to use Killington's bubble chair as an example. It has a front row style queue with a staff member up front directing people when to come out. In normal times, there were 6 lines for groups, plus two singles lines. This year, they had the same 6 group lines with spacing between, but only 1 singles line.

In normal times, if there were repeated 2's and 3's, they'd move up and make their own larger groups. This year, they stayed apart as their own groups. If the line was back to the end of the queue, there were the same number of groups in front of you as there would've been in previous years. It's just that those groups were smaller. The waiting time however would've been the same.

I noticed that gondolas, and lifts that function as overflow to gondolas tended to have the biggest increase in waiting times. This was due to the fact that gondola capacity was so extremely limited with cabins built for 8 sometimes going up with just 1, making the lines longer. People would seek the alternate lift either because the line was too long, or because they didn't want to take the gondola at all due to covid concerns. The most extreme case of this was Gore's Adirondack Express, but there were certainly others.

I think we’re saying the same thing sno.
There was a day at Cannon where the line for the Peabody Express (main base area lift) was out the corrals, across the base area, and down the steps to the parking lot. Everyone just really spread out, but probably on par total customer wise as just a full corral of 4 loads with a long singles line.

I also think that, without the need to combine groups, there wasn’t as much need for an operator to work the crowd this year, and they were probably hesitant to. Also my guess is like a lot of low paying service jobs, there was some understaffing.

 

[snoloco]

In your case, it sounds like they oversold tickets, or more passholders showed up than expected. Outside of Vail, Killington was the only resort in the Northeast that had a system in place that could limit their own passholders (that has since been discontinued). Everyone else simply projected passholder visits, and sold day tickets up to their capacity limit. Obviously that's an imperfect system, but most resorts went that route to eliminate the possibility of any passholders being shut out. There were a few days at Gore when they were way off in either direction, and the mountain ended up being totally empty, or totally packed. Judging by the parking lot, they never got as many people as they would on a holiday weekend in a normal year. The probably maxed out at 75% of what their theoretical capacity is, which has always been limited by parking.