A few weeks ago, we published the first part of this article, which called attention the decline of snowsports in the United States. The number of ski resorts operating in the US is down by roughly 1/3 since the 1980’s, and the numbers of skiers and riders has declined, as the boomers are leaving the sport, and fewer members of Generation X and Y are getting involved. If you haven’t read Part One yet, we encourage you to go back and read it now.
Nobody is expertly qualified to have all of the answers about what’s going on in the world of snowsports. Doing so would require some expertise in business and finance, weather climatology, human psychology, sociology, real estate and a number of other far flung fields. But many of us have been around long enough to watch what is happening. We’re not the only ones that are noticing that something different needs to happen.
Hal Clifford caught our attention first, with his 2002 book “Downhill Slide: Why The Corporate Ski Industry Is Bad For Skiing, Ski Towns and The Environment”. Since that time, the corporatization, homogenization and gentrification of skiing & riding has become more and more a part of our world in Lake Tahoe. In fact, it was the development of the Intrawest village at Squaw Valley that seemed to have inspired the 2007 film,“Resorting to Madness: Taking Back Mountain Communities”. The film examines the impacts of corporate ownership on mountain communities, and accurately depicts many of the things we have seen happen around Lake Tahoe since Vail Resorts and KSL Capital came to Lake Tahoe.
The thing is, these issues are not just affecting Tahoe resorts. There’s a lot of people, like us, that realize that there’s a problem with the consolidation of ski area ownership under a few mega-corporations. Many of those mega-corporations are interested in only one thing, maximizing profits for their investors. Too often that has meant they build real estate, and then sell and move on to a new opportunity as soon as possible. Much of this development has been made possible through lucrative land swaps that put public lands into the hands of developers. The pace of real estate development in the ski industry is unprecedented, and unnecessary.
As we said in Part One, the ski industry will not survive when every resort tries to become a destination resort. The ski industry cannot rely on filling beds with global travelers or families that own a condo for one week per year. In Tahoe, resorts are falling over themselves to attract more air traffic to the Reno-Tahoe airport, when there’s about 11 million people that are close enough to drive to Tahoe for a day trip or a weekend. Many of those same people would be happy to spend more time in Tahoe for longer vacations if it didn’t entail draining their kids’ college fund.
We’re not just complaining here, we offering some constructive ideas. They’re not just wacky ideas, they’re ideas that are already being put into place in other regions around the US. Keep in mind that the ideas are designed to keep snowsports alive for generations to come, not ideas which focus on the next quarter’s balance sheet.
What The Industry Can Do
• We have to get kids to fall in love with skiing and riding at an early age. That means we must make it fun, accessible and affordable so that families find it easy and cheap to bring their kids to ski or ride frequently. Many areas and regions are using “kids ski cheap programs” rather than looking at kids’ programs as a profit center. Every ski area should be looking to partner with schools to get kids hooked on sliding on snow.
• Kids need affordable ongoing “team experiences” that allow them to grow into life long skiers and riders. Familiarity with coaches, their home mountain and developing skiing and riding buddies is important in developing a passion for sliding on snow. Spending a few hours in a lesson with an unfamiliar instructor and strangers does not create the same experience.
• We need a variety of skiing and riding options for families that include breeder and feeder resorts that make it easy and affordable for families to go skiing and riding for a day or a weekend as frequently as possible. It’s these families that are likely to support local communities that surround ski areas. These same families will likely become the ones that help keep beds full at a reasonable number of destination resorts.
• Larger resorts should recognize the importance of the smaller resorts in creating a culture of skiers and riders. Rather than driving them out of business or buying them out, it makes more sense to foster them and develop a pipeline that brings traffic to the larger resorts. There are a ton of marketing opportunities to connect larger resorts with smaller resorts. We’re not talking about a corporation buying a small resort and jacking up the prices and improving equipment. We think it’s awesome that Squaw Valley has provided just about every lift at the Johnsville Ski Bowl, as they have been retired from service at Squaw Valley.
• Raise pass prices to more accurately cover your costs. Cheap passes require you to raise the cost of everything else, so overall the experience has become much more expensive. Cheap passes may “lock your customers in” but you can achieve the same result by making your customers your allies.
• Pay your employees a living wage. Retaining the same employees each season will lead to a sense of camaraderie on your staff and serve as a strong connection to your clients. Iconic employees like Kate Zaloga taking charge at Summit, or Gene Urie patrolling the Palisades help customers build a connection to the mountain.
• Pay attention to developing the culture of your resort to gain loyalty from your customers. Customers want to develop an affiliation with a mountain in the same way they affiliate with a particular sports team.
• Work to gain the support of your local community by working with your local community. When the ski area is successful, everyone should win, including loyal customers and surrounding businesses.
• Don’t attempt to continually expand and grow to keep up with other resorts. Give your customers what they want. There’s a reason they came to your resort in the first place. Figure out who your customer base is, and work to retain those customers and gain similar customers.
What The Consumer Can Do
• Get your kids involved in skiing and riding, which generally means that you will also go skiing and riding. Find an affordable team program that will turn your family into lifelong skiers and riders.
• Recognize that smaller areas offer plenty of challenges for 90% of skiers and riders.
• Don’t set absurdly high expectations for breeder and feeder hills. Not every lift will be a high speed quad, nor will every lodge serve filet mignon and microbrews.
• Recognize that you don’t really need a pass that offers skiing and riding in three states at 6 resorts on 65 lifts. The reality is that you likely go to only one or two of those resorts, and you ride the same three or four lifts every time. Thinking about this in terms of the food world, would you want to eat at a buffet every day? Sure they may offer more options than we need for a cheap price, but is it a better dining experience?
• Recognize that those cheap pass prices only result in everything else becoming more expensive. More expensive daily lift tickets, food and beverage, lessons and rentals make it difficult or impossible for families to get involved with skiing. It also makes it difficult to convince your friends and visiting family to want to go skiing and riding with you at your local resort. A cheap pass is no help to your friend that is in town for one weekend a year.
• Understand that your cheap pass price may be part of the cause for shortened seasons or employee shortages as mountains cannot pay a living wage.
• Stand up for your local hill. Get involved before it’s gone. Look for organizations that may need your help in supporting programs on your mountain. Alpine Meadows needs to be free to operate independently, just like Sugar Bowl, Mount Rose and Sierra-At-Tahoe. It did successfully for nearly 50 years before it was purchased to support a real estate dream.
Certainly, these lists are not comprehensive. They both focus on creating a community of skiers and riders that either live locally to a mountain, or are close enough to be day trippers or weekend warriors. Getting kids hooked on skiing and riding will not only get their families involved in skiing and riding, it’s a process they are likely to repeat over and over.
As always, we would love to hear your ideas too. We hope you join us in keeping skiing and riding alive.
For more reading on the subject, here’s a selection of articles published over the last 6 months:
http://www.powder.com/stories/endangered-town-hill/?sm_id=social_20140529_24914956
http://www.powder.com/stories/fighting-little-guys/
http://www.grindtv.com/action-sports/snow/post/community-ski-area/
http://ski.curbed.com/archives/2014/10/what-it-means-to-ski-in-a-vaildominated-world.php
Great reading and ideas!! I for one got hooked on skiing as a kid and now I’m standing in line to #FreeAlpine because affordability for new skiers is key to the sport and Alpine Meadows has lost that! It shouldn’t just be a rich mans game. The employees most definitely need a living wage, they are dedicated, passionate, and their experience counts!! Employees and customers at Alpine love the brand, but no KSL had to take that away too! Someday I’ll take that ride on Mainline………..
South Tahoe Buddy Werner youth ski league is doing sign ups at the Burger Lounge from 1:30 to 4:30 on Sunday Nov 23. South Tahoe trains at Sierra. A couple times each season we race with North Tahoe Buddy Werner and Johnsville, often meeting at Alpine till race each other. It’s wonderfully fun. https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1541182426093651
A lot of people who can afford more expensive passes seem to want cheap passes to go away to keep the crowds down, but affordable passes are one of the things that allow people to become serious skiers rather than one or two weekend a season skiers. Sure–day passes, food, and lessons have all gotten more expensive, but do you really think these things will become less expensive if passes become more expensive.
I’d sure like to see some mom and pop hills open for the non-uber, non-spenderific locals. Big mountain used chairs, log hut, volunteer patrol. Something that doesn’t require a $100 million dollar bond. Turner Mountain, MT did it. It’s been a while and they started with a t-bar but they have been able to upgrade to chairs. That’s what people who ski want.
My kids got priced out of Alpine Meadows after the buy out. They are at Sugar Bowl. I am the lone member with an Alpine Pass. Will do some side by side Sugar Bowl vs Alpine vs Squaw this year.
Will be interesting to see if Sugar Bowl opens all the chairs, and the grooming efforts. Seems Alpine is big on money hold and on limited grooming, Closing Scott early and not opening Alpine Bowl is lame, IMHO.
My great gk’s (locals and 4th gen AM skiers) can’t manage $2500 plus $2 a day for hot chocolate. They just signed up up at Mt Rose.-plus $2 for hot chocolate.-WTF
Perhaps the co-operative model that Mountain Riders Alliance has developed and is a working model will usher in the next gen with an affordable price point that focuses on one activity, skiing.
The corporate conglomerate models currently operating the premier areas have suffered greatly at the bottom line from over expansion/acquisitions and an excessive amount of mission creep evident beyond operating a ski area for the sole activity of skiing. To them it is all about the amenities of the ‘soft’ class.
If these large corporations that are so financially successful and run by such intelligent peeps, then why would they invest heavily in an industry that is seasonal and weather dependent? Shoulda just bought some dairy farms instead, dontcha think?
smootches