Will the Epic pass affect season pass prices in the northeast?

MarzNC · Oct 3, 2020

When the first Epic pass came on the scene in 2008, it started a shift in thinking about what made sense for the price of a 1-location season pass. Back then Vail Resorts provided unlimited access to four resorts in Colorado plus Heavenly.

Fast forward to 2020 (ignore the pandemic for a moment) . . . VR replaces the former Peak Resort pass options with Northeast passes. Northeast Value is $629 and Northeast Midweek is $469 for adults and $349 for seniors 65+. Covers VT (Stowe, Mt. Snow), NH, NY (Hunter), PA (former Snowtime), and the former Peak locations in OH.

Will 1-location season pass prices change in NY and New England? Stuart seems to think so.

Your Missing Season Pass Sales Are Sitting in Vail’s Bank Account

Plus one mountain cancels pass sales altogether; Loon’s season passes no longer include weekends

skiing.substack.com

" . . .

As of Sept. 28, six Northeast mountains post season pass prices that are higher than a $999 full Epic Pass. But most Northeast skiers don’t need a full Epic Pass, and the $749 Epic Local will get you unlimited access to all of Vail’s Northeast mountains outside of Stowe on holidays. Chop out the western access and holidays at Hunter, Okemo, and Mount Snow, and you’re looking at just $629 for the Northeast Value Pass (you’re also then restricted to 10 Stowe days). This product is cheaper than the full single-mountain season pass at 25 mountains across the Northeast, including smaller ski areas like Nashoba Valley and right-in-Vail’s-sites-in-the-middle-of-New-Hampshire Gunstock.

. . ."

Epicone · Oct 3, 2020

Rob Katz is Probably one of the greatest innovators in the history of the ski industry, changed the landscape of every ski area in the country, the max pass, the ikon pass and alterra all are the result of his innovations, maybe even the Indy pass. COVID has probably set the ski industry back five years, if the big four survive this crisis in their current form, it will be interesting to see what the big four does, especially what vail does next in the northeast, do they expand hunter or purchase another ski area in the Catskills or restart an old ski area like bobcat, does vail buy Smuggs and attach it to Stowe? In new Hampshire do they expand by buying Bretton woods along with the Mt Washington hotel or Waterville valley? Vail doesn’t seem to have any ski areas near Pittsburg and Buffalo areas, do they purchase an area near those two cities.

it will be interesting what the non big four areas in the north east do, is Berkshire east with three areas on their pass a budding player in New England?, do they buy the blandford ski area and add it to their pass? Does Berkshire east add butternut to their stable? What does the Fairbanks group do? What does wachusetts do? Does wachusetts need to do anything?
will be interesting to watch this play out, with different players with different business plans vying for skiers.

Brownski · Oct 3, 2020

Not to throw cold water but I think the history of the business would suggest that bad economic times lead to the big groups selling off mountains and hunkering down, not more acquisitions and innovation. Vail firing a bunch of marketing people is just the beginning of the cost cutting. There may not be a big reduction of skier visits this year but profitability is gonna tank due to reduced food and booze sales. Hopefully I’m wrong

Epicone · Oct 3, 2020

That’s why I stated if the big four survive in their current form and that COVID has set the industry back five years, if Katz gets vail thru this in its current form, it will be his biggest management success to date, bigger than his epic pass, bigger than his ski resort purchases. Each of the big four has different strengths and weaknesses, powder has the worst management, vail has the best, my guess alterra has the most debt, boyne probably has the lowest skier visits it’s close with powder though.

Harvey · Oct 3, 2020

Epicone said:
do they expand hunter or purchase another ski area in the Catskills or restart an old ski area like bobcat, does vail buy Smuggs and attach it to Stowe

I guess you'd mean Windham.

Bobcat is not going to reopen, IMO.

Smuggs I could see. Tragic, but yeah.

MarzNC · Oct 3, 2020

Brownski said:
Not to throw cold water but I think the history of the business would suggest that bad economic times lead to the big groups selling off mountains and hunkering down, not more acquisitions and innovation. Vail firing a bunch of marketing people is just the beginning of the cost cutting. There may not be a big reduction of skier visits this year but profitability is gonna tank due to reduced food and booze sales. Hopefully I’m wrong

The way I read the re-org for VR Marketing, it was in the works even before the pandemic started. The same consolidation and re-org happened for Finance. Figuring out what to do with Peak Resorts had to have taken longer than simply bringing in one resort. Peak had barely finished integrating the PA locations and northeast locations when the ownership changed. Triple Peaks really was three quite separate ski resorts, so more similarity to the first three "urban" ski areas in the midwest. Those were long time family-owned businesses. VR spent a lot of money on upgrades immediately after the acquisitions. For Triple Peaks and Peak Resorts, that wasn't as necessary.

As I remember the integration of W-B was very painful.

The VR podcasts make for pretty interesting listening for people with an open mind about the corporation.

[Episode 6] Integrating a Winning Team |

insideepic.com

MarzNC · Oct 3, 2020

The other trend I've been watching is the implementation of RFID. What isn't mentioned that often is that 2008 not only marked the start of the Epic pass, but also the start of VR's proprietary in-house IT development that has evolved into EpicMix. The social media features of EpicMix are popular with some Epic passholders, probably the subset who also tend to spend more money at a resort.

Jiminy Peak went to RFID relatively early. Being able to add days or hours without stopping by a ticket office is handy. From the JP perspective, that gives them data about usage that's much more reliable than with any scanning system that's labor intensive.

Boyne Resorts is implementing the first dual-band RFID system. Takes a certain economy of scale to have a custom system developed.

Epicone · Oct 3, 2020

Harvey said:
I guess you'd mean Windham.

Bobcat is not going to reopen, IMO.

Smuggs I could see.

using Bobcat as an example, really not aware of Catskills skiing, whether open or closed, peak resorts reopened crotched Mtn in New Hampshire, I am sure vail watched that closely, would they do it themselve? Who knows!

Epicone · Oct 3, 2020

MarzNC said:
The other trend I've been watching is the implementation of RFID. What isn't mentioned that often is that 2008 not only marked the start of the Epic pass, but also the start of VR's proprietary in-house IT development that has evolved into EpicMix. The social media features of EpicMix are popular with some Epic passholders, probably the subset who also tend to spend more money at a resort.

Jiminy Peak went to RFID relatively early. Being able to add days or hours without stopping by a ticket office is handy. From the JP perspective, that gives them data about usage that's much more reliable than with any scanning system that's labor intensive.

Boyne Resorts is implementing the first dual-band RFID system. Takes a certain economy of scale to have a custom system developed.

What is dual band rfid system? Boyne resorts is quite the innovator across the decades, first to triple chair, first quad, first six pack. They are working on making snow only below 25 degrees, not sure if it’s 25,24 or another number, they found making snow below a certain temp keeps it form forming boiler plate which stays all winter, hear it works great in the Midwest, now working on it for new england

MarzNC · Oct 3, 2020

Epicone said:
What is dual band rfid system?

A little reading about the Boyne RFID system. First link is the press release from 2019. Axess is the vendor. That's the vendor that Alta chose back in 2007. RFID can be used for a lot more than lift access at a ski resort. With RFID readers at food and retail outlets, resorts can eliminate the need to pull out cash or a credit card to pay for a purchase.

Boyne Resorts: First In The World To Offer Dual-Frequency Lift Access