Schweitzer Mountain, ID: 03/03/21

[tirolski]

This caught my eye.

One way to look at it: For 7 years, we were a part of the Powder Alliance and the most visited resort out of all 18 areas that were members. Powder Alliance generated about 5,000 visits across the season – that works out to an extra 40 people/day. On a mountain of our size, that number was easy to absorb. It will be very similar but given some improvements we plan to make, the redemption process at Guest Services will be much more streamlined.

Doesn’t Icon have way more folks than powder-alliance?
As for the number of folks showing up at a ski resort, it’s smoothing too much to use averages... i.e. "that works out to 40 per day.”
It’s kinda like saying we get 4 inches of snow a day everyday.
It’s their thing and hopefully works out for ‘em.
They might want to edit their webpage though, just sayin.

10 Resorts that Aren't on Epic or Ikon That You Should Know

www.schweitzer.com

 

[MarzNC]

This caught my eye.
Doesn’t Icon have way more folks than powder-alliance?

In terms of pure numbers, hard to say how Powder Alliance and Ikon compare. I agree Ikon probably has more passholders.

The people who buy a 1-location season pass at a ski area/resort that includes Powder Alliance days as a no-added-cost are probably very different than people who spend $800-1200 on an Ikon pass. While there are a few Alterra resorts that use Ikon as the season pass, my guess is that most people who buy Ikon plan to travel out-of-state at least once, if not 2-3 times during a given season. Could also be that people with Ikon are more likely to spend money at a resort when they travel.

I've been curious about Schweitzer and Red Mountain for a while because Southwest flies to Spokane. So joining Ikon makes it more likely that I and a few friends will make it there sooner rather than later.

 

[Harvey]

Reminds me of the ORDA discussions here, where everyone knows the pain points, including the ski areas themselves. Schweitzer at least said the quiet part out loud.

That's what I would do, try to pre-empt the discussion by addressing it. Be funny as hell to see something like:

"We don't want to grow our business because we like our slopes empty, so to cover our costs we've decided screw our captive audience by raising mid-week pass prices for people who own real estate in town."

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The people who buy a 1-location season pass at a ski area/resort that includes Powder Alliance days as a no-added-cost are probably very different than people who spend $800-1200 on an Ikon pass. (...) Could also be that people with Ikon are more likely to spend money at a resort when they travel.

Would be interesting to see the actual bean counting that led to Schweitzer (or any ski area) to join Ikon, Epicpass, Indy Pass, etc. For example, we know that Laszlo at Plattekill doesn't see enough upside to Indy even though many people have suggested that he join.

 

[Brownski]

The bean inventory is a closely held secret apparently

 

[saratogahalfday]

In terms of pure numbers, hard to say how Powder Alliance and Ikon compare. I agree Ikon probably has more passholders.

The people who buy a 1-location season pass at a ski area/resort that includes Powder Alliance days as a no-added-cost are probably very different than people who spend $800-1200 on an Ikon pass. While there are a few Alterra resorts that use Ikon as the season pass, my guess is that most people who buy Ikon plan to travel out-of-state at least once, if not 2-3 times during a given season. Could also be that people with Ikon are more likely to spend money at a resort when they travel.

I've been curious about Schweitzer and Red Mountain for a while because Southwest flies to Spokane. So joining Ikon makes it more likely that I and a few friends will make it there sooner rather than later.

I might check them out next year, I'll be in Seattle in early March so maybe an IKON tour east from there is in line.

 

[x10003q]

Schweitzer will be fine. It is still 6 hours drive from Seattle. Red Mountain is 3.5 hour drive from Schweitzer (if the Canadian border opens) - not exactly a day trip. The places that are crowded supposedly due to Epic/Ikon where either crowded before (Jackson Hole/Vail) or have a lot of areas in close proximity (Salt Lake City).