MarzNC
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2020
A little confused by the history for Katz and Epic. Pretty sure the shift away from real estate was started by the CEO before Katz. The implication that Katz came up with the Epic pass idea because of the Max Pass. The first season for the "M.A.X. Pass" was 2015-16. Epic was initiated in 2008. Also makes it sound like Epic was created and the acquisitions of new resorts ramped up quickly. Not exactly the reality. The acquisitions east of Denver started in 2012.Mainly about Stowe & VailFail in this one.
"“You can’t offer unlimited access to something that has a limited supply. It’s as if you had a restaurant with 40 seats and then told an unlimited number of people they can come in and have a meal. You’re going to run out of space, materials and what a staff can deliver,” says Jonny Adler, a Stowe local and a partner in The Skinny Pancake restaurant business."
Why Is Everyone So Angry At Vail Resorts? – VT SKI + RIDE
Look at it one way and it’s the classic American business success story: Young Wharton Business School grad gets tappedvtskiandride.com
"“I don’t think losing a few customers is going to make a difference,” says Adler. “Vail’s a big corporation. If you ask Kirsten Lynch if she cares more about skiers or her shareholders, she’s going to say ‘shareholders,’—she should, it’s America and that’s her job,” he notes."
Probably few people in the northeast cared what VR did before Stowe was added to Epic. When Epic started, all the VR resorts were all in the west. No one in the northeast would've paid attention what happened to the first three family-owned hills in the midwest that became the "urban" division.
Would've been better to just stick to the story of what happened in the northeast in recent years. Plenty of reasons for folks in New England to be unhappy. Park City might be relevant for families who take holiday ski trips. But how many folks in the northeast fly to ski Stevens Pass?
" . . .
Young Wharton Business School grad gets tapped to run a mid-sized ski company. Rather than focus on skiing as a way to sell condos, he sees the money in the lift ticket itself. More precisely the season pass, that three-figure annual fee that’s on auto-pay on hundreds of thousands of credit cards.
An idea percolates: What if you could get everyone to buy season passes in, say May or June? You wouldn’t have to worry as much about bad weather. You’d get all the money upfront, whether it snowed or not. And if those season passes were good at resorts all over the country (or world), there would bound to be snow somewhere, right?
That Wharton grad, Rob Katz, takes an idea that was launched with the Max Pass and runs big with it, incentivizing early season pass sales by offering early discounts. As CEO of Vail Resorts, he jacks up the day ticket prices too, so it’s much more attractive to buy, say, a $783 season pass versus paying as much as $200 a day at a walk-up window.
How do you find more people willing to buy season passes in April? Well, you buy more ski resorts. Not just any ski resorts, but local hills near big population centers where people are passionate about their home mountains and ski every weekend.
. . ."
