Consent forms filed in federal court last week show that nearly 2,000 ski and snowboard instructors have joined a collective action against Vail Resorts, alleging Fair Labor Standards Act lawsuit against the company.

The case, Quint et al. v. Vail Resorts, Inc., alleges Vail Resorts failed to properly compensate snowsports instructors for required job duties. According to the official litigation website, plaintiffs claim employees were not paid for “off-the-clock” work, including time spent traveling between job sites, putting on and removing equipment, and attending training sessions.

The lawsuit also alleges that instructors were not reimbursed for necessary job expenses such as ski equipment and work-related cell phone use, and will attempt to recoup those expenses from the company for employees.

Vail Resorts has denied all allegations, maintaining it has complied with wage laws and properly paid its employees.

Anyone who was a ski or snowboard instructor at any Vail Resorts-owned ski area at any time since the 2017-18 season is eligible to join if they signed on by Wednesday.

To participate in the lawsuit, eligible instructors must actively opt in by submitting a consent form, available at vailresortsinstructorwagelitigation.com under the “Join Collective” option.

For full story see www.vaildaily.com

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At its annual investor conference this week, Vail Resorts for the first time provided a multi-year growth framework for earnings, laying out a target of mid-single-digit growth in profit before taxes.

The company — which has grown from owning or operating five resorts in 2002 to 42 resorts in 2026 — also said acquisitions are no longer atop its list of priorities, something investors had yet to hear from executives prior to this week’s conference.

The company said it expects “+5–7% EBITDA” growth over the long term, looking ahead to fiscal years 2028 to 2030, marking the first time the company has formally quantified a multi-year earnings trajectory to investors. EBITDA stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.

“Expect long-term growth (FY28-FY30) before acquisitions and new business opportunities,” the company said in a presentation on Tuesday.

For full story, see Vail Daily.com

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News that Vail Resorts‘ board had accepted Kirsten Lynch’s resignation as CEO and appointed Rob Katz to succeed her sent shockwaves through the ski industry on Tuesday, prompting several analysts to issue opinions on how the move could affect the company moving forward.

Late Apex Partners founder Taylor Schmidt, an investor who was particularly critical of Lynch in a white paper he published on the company in January, commended the Vail Resorts board on making what he called a “necessary transition” of the CEO position.

Schmidt, in his research paper, said a former marketing executive and a former senior director told him Lynch had created a toxic work environment at Vail Resorts.

Schmidt quoted the former marketing executive as saying many people who had left the company in recent years “left because of Kirsten’s leadership.”

One of Schmidt’s chief concerns was the fact that Lynch herself was not purchasing shares in the company.

“In the last three years, CEO Lynch has reaped $19 million in total compensation yet has purchased zero stock,” Schmidt said in his report. “Management has no skin in the game, signaling zero conviction in Vail’s future.”

While Lynch was CEO, company insiders received $47 million in payments while the stock price declined 53%, according to Schmidt’s January report.

“Management have irreparably damaged Vail’s perception among stakeholders (customers, partners, employees and Investors) and there is no accountability,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt’s report came on the heels of a contentious labor dispute with the Park City ski patrollers’ union, resulting in the first instance of ski resort employees walking off the job in a collective bargaining dispute since 1964.

A few months earlier, California’s Third Appellate District Court threw out a settlement Vail Resorts had negotiated with more than 100,000 employees who claimed numerous Fair Labor Standards Act violations, including unpaid hours and overtime, necessary equipment and expenses not being reimbursed, and other violations. It was one of two such lawsuits against the company.

But it wasn’t all bad news under Lynch’s tenure. Katz celebrated some of her accomplishments in a letter to employees on Tuesday, saying she navigated “some of the most challenging times that our company has faced as we navigated dynamic events post-pandemic.”

In addition to helping the company expand into Europe with the acquisition of Crans-Montana in Switzerland in 2023 and Andermatt-Sedrun in Switzerland in 2022, Lynch also ushered in a $20 per hour minimum wage for employees at the company’s large resorts.

Lynch’s severance includes a one-time payment of $2,249,108, which is the equivalent of two years of her base salary, according to documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

On Tuesday, Schmidt said his company hopes to work constructively with Vail’s board to see the company realize its potential.

“It is clear to everyone — shareholders, customers, and employees — that Vail lost its way,” Schmidt said. “Rob’s return provides the opportunity for a reset, and to reignite an era of operational excellence. We believe Vail’s time, energy, and cash flows ought to be invested back into creating a truly world-class skiing experience for its guests. Ultimately, returns to shareholders will follow these choices. To that end, we look forward to hearing what Rob Katz has planned for Vail on next week’s earnings call.”

Regarding the June 5 earnings call, Vail Resorts analyst Jeff Stantial with Stifel Financial issued a note on Tuesday saying he hopes Katz will address a big question his company has been receiving in recent months: What could a new CEO do differently?

“We expect this will be a key focus on the upcoming F3Q earnings call, though some theorized operational improvements include: 1) improved labor/union negotiation, 2) more achievable guidance and improved disclosures, 3) greater efforts to maintain lift/terrain availability during periods of challenging conditions, 4) more proactive control of negative media coverage and resulting guest perception, and 5) investments into offering and labor commensurate with luxury positioning,” Stantial said.

But while the June earnings call will provide Katz an opportunity to address investors’ concerns, some of those anxieties may not be soothed right away.

“Key changes will take time to develop and implement, and may not be communicated until MTN’s Investor Conference next March,” Stantial said.

This story first appeared at www.VailDaily.com

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At ski racing media centers across North America, John Dakin was often performing the most important job in the room as chief of press.

But to the one-time Park City resident who decades ago moved to Vail, it wasn’t a job at all. It was a passion.

Dakin, 71, died on April 12 after battling Parkinson’s disease for the past several years. He was the first person to hold the chief of press position at three Alpine world championships and also served as Alpine press chief at the 2002 Olympics and the Alpine mixed zone coordinator at the 2010 Olympics.

Before that, Dakin was a public relations specialist with the U.S. Ski Team and the University of Colorado, where he started his career.

David Plati, the longtime sports information director and associate athletic director at CU, said he first met Dakin as a freshman in the sports information office on the Boulder campus.

“He was the main contact for the ski team, even as a student,” Plati said. “So we wound up being friends for over 45 years.”

Dakin became the sports information director for CU’s ski team after graduating.

“I believe he worked at least three if not four of our NCAA championships,” Plati said. “He was attached at the hip to the program, was well respected and loved what he did — those days you had to come off the hill, type your story somewhere, and find a telecopier to send it to the media.”

While at CU, Dakin worked under Bill Marolt, the former Olympian who finished 12th in the giant slalom in the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Games. Marolt moved into coaching after his competitive career and led the Buffaloes to seven straight NCAA titles from 1978. When he left to coach the U.S. Ski Team through the 1984 Olympics, he brought Dakin with him.

“We needed a PR person,” Marolt said in the video that ran before Dakin’s 2022 induction into the Colorado Snowsports Museum’s Hall of Fame in Vail. “The first person that came to my mind was John. So we contacted him, naturally, he was excited to do it, came to Park City, and was there during one of the golden eras of U.S. skiing.”

Finding a home in Vail

In the late 1980s, Dakin moved to Vail and took on the chief of press role at the 1989 world championships for what was then a new and small organization, the Vail Valley Foundation. The original plan was for Dakin’s position to be eliminated following the event, but Vail Valley Foundation Vice President John Garnsey helped lead the effort to keep him on board as a public relations person for the foundation. Dakin would go on to help with events ranging from the Alpine World Ski Championships in 1999 and 2015 to the Bolshoi Ballet to the Mountain Bike World Championships.

Dakin made all those things a lot easier because of his reputation, Garnsey said.

“He was loved by the staff at the foundation, he was loved by the ski team people, the CU people,” Garnsey said. “He was a great writer, a great thinker.”

Garnsey said Dakin had a very calm demeanor, and he never had any issues with the press.

“We’re going to miss him,” Garnsey said, adding that he and other old foundation hands had spent a lot of time with him in the past few weeks.

Dakin’s move from the U.S. Ski Team to the Vail Valley Foundation left a public relations void at the ski team which was filled by Tom Kelly.

“I often think back to when I was just a young ski PR person and how I looked up to him at the U.S. Ski Team,” Kelly said, “not having any idea I would follow him and how our paths would work in parallel for so many years.”

A legendary talent

While working the ’89 Alpine world championships, Dakin got to know then-volunteer Ceil Folz, who would go on to become the CEO of the Vail Valley Foundation.

“If you ever watched him call a World Cup race, he would do it without cards,” Folz said. “Every single racer in the start — he seemed to know everything about them.”

Folz said the foundation often used the phrase “bringing Vail to the world, and the world to Vail,” a tagline that was coined by Dakin.

“If you look at almost every single thing the VVF did between 1989-2015, John either wrote it, came up with the idea, or fixed it before it went out the door,” Folz said.

At the foundation, Dakin became known for his sense of humor and spot-on impressions of well-known locals like President Ford and Harry Frampton. When he left the foundation in 2015, Dakin became a natural fit for the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail, which was in the process of transforming its exhibits at the time.

Dakin wrote the descriptions for many of the exhibits at the museum today. Jen Mason, the museum’s executive director, said he was a perfect fit for the role. The museum is also in charge of the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame, which Dakin was running when Mason started.

“For 20 years, he wrote the scripts that were read when people were inducted, and did the voiceovers for their videos,” Mason said. “By the time that video is done, you completely understand why that person is being inducted.”

A Hall of Famer

But when it came time to induct Dakin himself in 2022, “We were like, ‘Oh no, who’s going to write his script?’” Mason said.

That job fell to Kelly, taking over for Dakin just like he had all those years earlier as the U.S. Ski Team’s press person.

Kelly said Dakin will be remembered by many for his announcing at ski races, where he developed his own style with “his info-packed race calls and his strong sense of sport production,” Kelly said.

In receiving the award, Dakin said he felt like he had never worked a day in his life.

“For the past 40-plus years, I haven’t had a job, which my high school guidance counselors thought was going to happen,” Dakin said. “I’ve had a passion, and I was fortunate enough to turn that passion into a career.”

A celebration of life is being planned for later in the summer in Vail.

“This story is from VailDaily.com. Tricia Swenson, Scott Miller and Nate Peterson contributed.

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A Vail Resorts investor made waves in the ski industry this week when he published a scathing report on the company as a business and called for the resignation of CEO Kirsten Lynch and former CEO Rob Katz, now the chair of the board for the ski resort giant.

But not much is known about the investor, Taylor Schmidt, and his company, Late Apex Partners, or how much of a stake the company has in Vail Resorts, though Schmidt said the ski company makes up his company’s largest single investment.

Analysts who cover the company and would speak to a reporter off the record said they were unable to get any additional comment from Schmidt, and Vail Resorts said it was the first communication the company had received from him.

The Vail Daily was able to obtain a statement from Schmidt, who said that since sending out the letter, he has been dismissed as a small-time investor even though he has more equity in the company “than quite a few board members,” describing his effort as David vs. Goliath.

“The report’s merit should stand on its own regardless of who wrote it,” Schmidt said. “Either the ideas are right or wrong. That is up to the customer/employee to decide.”

Read more: “Vail Resorts shareholder speaks out after penning scathing letter”

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With the sales window now closed, Vail Resorts officials said the company sold 2% fewer pre-purchased lift passes than last year, but the total sales dollars on those passes was 4% higher due to the rising cost of passes. 

Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch told investors at the company’s 2025 first-quarter earnings call that despite the decline in new pass holders, the company’s Epic Day Pass achieved unit growth driven by the strength in renewing pass holders. The Epic Day Pass allows guests to pre-purchase passes for a limited number of days, as opposed to Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass or Epic Local Pass, which provide unlimited access all season long. 

“We saw growth among our renewing pass holders, and that growth was across all of our geographies,” Lynch said. 

Vail Resorts operates 42 ski resorts in nine states in the U.S. and four countries, including Canada, Australia and Switzerland. 

The majority of people who renewed their lift passes renewed into the same pass product as the season before, Lynch said.

Lynch said lapsed guests — those who have visited a Vail Resorts property in the past, but did not ski last winter — came back in increased numbers. 

“Where we saw the decline, year over year, was on prior year lift ticket guests, which was really driven by the size of that audience being smaller after very a tough weather season and industry normalization,” Lynch said. 

Vail Resorts has previously stated that across all of its properties last season, challenging weather conditions resulted in a 9.5% decline in visitation. 

The idea of “industry normalization” is a reference to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the 2019-20 season to be cut short by a month, but is also cited as a factor in the record visitation North American ski resorts then saw during the 2022-23 season, once the pandemic had ended. 

Vail Resorts also saw a decline among what it calls “prospect guests,” guests who are new to the company. 

The 2.3 million pre-purchased passes sold are nearly identical to the number of passes sold for the 2022-23 season. 

Many of the pre-purchased passes for this year were purchased near the close of the selling cycle, Lynch said, which means they may not have been “pre-purchased” at all, in the traditional definition of the term. As resorts like Vail were getting bombarded with snow around the Thanksgiving holiday period, the 2024-25 pass sales window was still open, meaning a guest could buy an Epic Day Pass and use it that same day. Vail Resorts cut off pre-purchased pass sales on Dec. 2.  

“If you look through the cadence of our selling cycle this year, we definitely saw renewers as well as new guests delaying decision-making later into the selling cycle,” Lynch said. 

That’s why, Lynch added, “between September and December, we saw improvement in the growth rates during that late part of the selling cycle.”

Lynch said bookings at hotels in resort towns are higher than pre-COVID numbers for the upcoming holiday period, and “pretty consistent with prior year” bookings. 

At Vail Resorts-owned hotels, “bookings patterns seem to be strengthening as we get closer” to the holiday period, which Lynch suspects is happening because “people are seeing the snow conditions are strong.”

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BBC interviewer Katty Kay sat down with current Park City resident and Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn earlier this week to learn more about Vonn’s ski racing career and what her life has been like after the Olympics.

“It’s harder than I’ve expected it to be,” Vonn told Kay. “I’ve realized that there’s nothing that’s going to fill the hole of ski racing.”

Kay chose Vonn to interview as part of a special four-part series kicking off the BBC News Channel’s 2024 Olympics coverage. Kay said she wanted to interview some of the most legendary athletes from previous Olympic games for in-depth conversations about their lives, sports, and what it takes to succeed at the highest level.

“In addition to talking about the Olympics, it’s important to me that these interviews tell audiences more about who these incredible athletes are as people and that our conversations focused as much on the person as they do on the sport,” Kay said.

Kay traced Vonn’s career from her childhood in Minnesota to the family’s move to Vail, which put pressure on Vonn to succeed, she said.

“I don’t think I really grasped the sacrifices that my family was making until everyone moved out to Colorado,” Vonn said. “I knew the financial burden it was putting on my family. … It was hard, and I realized that everything was being put on my plate, the hopes and dreams of my family were riding on my shoulders.”

Vonn said that pressure made her more focused on working hard and making sure everything she did helped her become more successful at ski racing. When her neighbors would have parties, she wouldn’t attend, she said.

“It was something that I just didn’t do because I knew that my family was sacrificing everything for me, and I can’t let that go to waste,” Vonn said. “I can’t put that in jeopardy by having fun.”

A downhiller, Vonn said the rush of the sport’s fastest discipline made it exciting for her.

“Adrenaline is something that I feed off of, I love, I need it, it’s what gets me going, I need a challenge, I need something to push me,” she said.

Vonn won four World Cup overall championships — including three straight in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In 2010, she also took gold in downhill at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, a first for an American woman. She is third on the all-time World Cup wins list, with 82 victories, and is just one of six women to have won World Cup races in all five disciplines of alpine skiing — downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and super combined.

Of her 82 World Cup wins, 43 came in downhill while 28 came in super-G. Vonn landed on a World Cup podium 66 times in her favorite discipline of downhill. But since retiring, she has found some difficulty adjusting to regular life, she said.

“I think that’s actually the hardest thing for me now, in this next chapter of life without ski racing, is that I don’t have (an adrenaline rush), and I’ve had to try to figure out a way to find that excitement and adventure without racing downhill,” she said. “Life without ski racing is “pretty boring, to be honest.”

Vonn said she retired expecting it to be hard, but getting away from ski racing has been even harder than expected, she said.

“I’ve realized that there’s nothing that’s going to fill the hole of ski racing,” she said. “I’m never going to go 85 miles an hour again. … And I don’t have that anymore. And I’ll never have that. And that’s really hard. Like, that’s just not something that goes away easily. … I treat it like a death.”

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Vail Resorts has been attempting to move guests away from walk-up lift ticket sales and into pre-purchased passes in recent decades, and that strategy seems to have worked better than intended in 2023-24.

Company officials disclosed information about 2023-24 skier visitation and revenue and discussed the season with analysts recently during Vail Resorts’ third-quarter earnings call, sharing a few key takeaways.

Among them: Skier visitation from lift ticket guests was down 17% compared with the prior year period, but total net revenue for the company increased 3.6% to nearly $1.3 billion for the three-month period that ended April 30.

As a result of revenues falling short of predictions, CEO Kirsten Lynch told investors the company lowered its earnings predictions for its 2024 fiscal year, which will close on July 31. The move marks the third time the company has reduced its expectations in 2024.

The news sent Vail Resorts stock plummeting to a four-year low, hitting $165 per share at one point on Friday before rebounding, somewhat, to current levels of about $180. In early 2024, Vail Resorts stock was trading at about $220 per share.

After telling investors in December the company was expecting to net an estimated $912 million to $968 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization for fiscal year 2024, the company issued a release in January saying that number will more likely be “in the lower half of the guidance range.”

By March, the company had issued an altogether new target of $849 million to $885 million for fiscal 2024.

And on Thursday, Lynch told investors that number was more likely to be in the range of $825 million to $843 million, factoring in the 17% reduction in lift ticket revenue during the company’s fiscal third quarter, which ended April 30.

But there was another factor to consider, as well, Lynch told investors, as 2024-25 pass product sales through May 28 have decreased approximately 5% in units from the prior year period. Due to the company’s 8% price increase over last year’s pass, however, sales dollars have increased approximately 1% compared with the prior year period.

Lynch said the reduction in lift ticket sales from the end of the 2023-24 season, and the decrease in pre-purchased passes for 2024-25 are likely related.

“The single biggest impact on our spring pass sales is new pass holders and that is driven by lift ticket guests,” Lynch said. “And the size of that audience is down significantly, which is impacting, then, our ability to convert them into new pass holders.”

In recent years, Vail Resorts has used high lift ticket prices as a tool to convert more guests into pre-purchased passes. A single-day lift ticket at Vail Mountain hit $299 during the 2023-24 Christmas-New Year holiday period; it was $199 during the 2017-18 holiday.

Lift ticket sales were expected to make up about 35 percent of Vail Resorts total lift revenue in fiscal year 2024, the company told investors at the company’s 2024 investors conference in March, and Vail Resorts has set a public goal of moving that number to 25 percent.

At this year’s investor’s conference, the company noted that the “majority of lift ticket business is ‘addressable’ to transition to pass,” and the company is “well-positioned to grow advance commitment with 26 resorts in East and leading Epic brand awareness.”

But doing so requires those lift ticket guests to see the high price at the window during a spring visit, while next year’s season pass is on sale at the lowest price point it will see over the next eight months. Vail Resorts launched 2024-25 season pass sales on March 5, with more than six weeks remaining in Vail Mountain’s season, and more than nine weeks remaining in Breckenridge’s season, to capitalize on the sticker shock lift ticket guests experience at the ticket window.

The decrease in lift ticket revenue the company saw over the final two months of its season was part of an overall decrease in visitation across Vail Resorts and North America, Lynch pointed out on the call with investors, saying Vail Resorts properties saw an 8% decrease in skier visits in 2023-24.

The National Ski Areas Association’s preliminary skier visit numbers for 2023-24, released in May, estimate a 7.6% decrease nationwide to 60.4 million, down from 65.4 million in 2022-23. That number was an outlier on the chart, occurring during a massive snow year when many places across the West saw snowfall totals well above average and some parts of the country broke records.

Before last year, the record skier visit year was the year before, 2021-22, which saw 60.7 million visits, just 0.5% less than this season’s estimated total of 60.4 million.

Nevertheless, Lynch told investors that the company was hoping for another big visitation year in 2023-24 to help boost pre-purchased pass sales for 2024-25.

“I think it is important for us to highlight that the U.S. ski industry decline of 8 percent, our decline in visits of 8 percent which is consistent with that, does reduce the pool of guests to transition into a pass, and we do believe that it is having an impact, and it will have an impact through the rest of the selling cycle,” Lynch said.

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Vail Resorts has entered into an agreement to acquire its 42nd ski area, Crans-Montana Mountain Resort in Switzerland.

In a deal that has been in the works for several months, Vail Resorts will purchase an 84 percent ownership stake in Remontées Mécaniques Crans Montana Aminona SA, the company that controls and operates the lifts and supporting mountain operations at Crans-Montana.

The purchase is part of an ongoing growth strategy which is simultaneously focused on both European acquisitions and a reduction of the company’s net-operating footprint, Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch said last week.

“Our acquisition of the resort aligns to our growth strategy of expanding our resort network in Europe, creating even more value for our pass holders and guests around the world,” Lynch said. “We share many values with the Crans-Montana community, including a commitment to environmental responsibility and reducing our net-operating footprint.”

The Crans-Montana deal marks Vail Resorts’ second Swiss ski area acquisition in as many years, with the company also acquiring Andermatt-Sedrun in 2022.

“Much like Andermatt-Sedrun, we believe Crans-Montana has a unique opportunity for future growth,” Lynch said.

While Crans-Montana will not be included on Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass for the 2023-24 season, officials announced Thursday that it will be included for 2024-25. The Epic Pass also includes five days at Verbier4Vallées in Switzerland.

The Epic Pass also offers seven days at Les 3 Vallées in France, which is about an hour and a half north of Verbier.

Crans-Montana will host the Alpine World Ski Championships in 2027, an every-other-year event that Vail Resorts last hosted in 2015 at Beaver Creek. Crans-Montana officials, in a statement issued Thursday, expressed confidence in Vail Resorts’ ability to pull off a good event in 2027.

“Vail Resorts as new owner of the ski area will also have a positive impact on the organization of the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in 2027 at Crans-Montana,” the Association of the Municipality of Crans-Montana Board of Directors said Thursday.

Crans-Montana will also host a mountain biking World Cup in 2024, the Union Cycliste Internationale Mountain Bike World Series, slated for June 20-23.

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Vail Resorts was happy to report an increase in pass sales over the prior year period in its fiscal year 2023 fourth-quarter earnings call this week.

The strong pass sales were cited in the company’s latest fiscal year 2024 projection — Vail Resorts is expecting nearly $1 billion in earnings over the next year — but Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch mentioned some potential headwinds during the discussion with analysts.

Some of those potential issues were seen in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023 and have carried over into the first quarter of 2024, which began Aug. 1: Labor costs, a bad weather year in Australia, and reduced demand for the company’s North American summer operations have affected profits.

Chief Financial Officer Angela Korch said inflation continues to be a factor that could have an impact in the months to come.

So far in 2023, pass product sales for the upcoming 2023-24 North American ski season have increased approximately 7% in units and approximately 11% in sales dollars compared to the period in the prior year through Sept. 23, 2022.

Vail Resorts reported record visitation at its ski resorts during March and April, contributing to a record ski season in North America

“The return to normal staffing levels enabled our mountain resorts to deliver a strong guest experience resulting in a significant improvement in guest satisfaction scores, which exceeded pre-COVID levels at our destination mountain resorts,” Lynch said.

But the season wasn’t without its challenges, which were referenced several times in the call. While the company accounts for weather challenges, last year’s challenges were extreme, Lynch said.

“We were down to grass in January at some of our ski areas, and that we can’t predict,” Lynch said, in reference to Vail Resorts’ ski areas in the eastern United States.

The Australian winter season, which ran from June to September, also saw below-average snowfall and snowmaking temperatures that limited terrain availability, Lynch said.

This summer, North American operations have underperformed expectations due to “lower demand for destination mountain travel,” Lynch said, “which we believe was primarily driven by a broader shift in summer travel behavior associated with the wider variety of vacation offerings available following various travel restrictions in the prior two years, and weather-related operational disruptions.”

Many of Vail Mountain’s summer amenities were not offered to guests this year.

Reduced demand for summer visitation is not expected to continue in the long term, Korch said.

“We expect that to normalize over time,” Korch said. “We don’t think that that’s a permanent shift in behavior.”

Heading into winter 2023-24 in North America, Vail Resorts will cap off a $180 million to $185 million investment in calendar year 2023, with Keystone’s 555-acre Bergman Bowl expansion set to open this season, and a new high-speed quad replacing the existing two-person 5-Chair lift on Peak 8 in Breckenridge.

The company’s My Epic Gear program, a rental delivery idea that was met with skepticism in Vail, will also be tested out on a limited number of pass holders this season at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Keystone, Lynch confirmed on Thursday.

My Epic Gear will use a foot-scanning feature in the company’s new My Epic App to recommend the optimal boots and insoles for guests and is part of an overall effort to increase resource efficiency through technology at Vail Resorts.

The company also uses a data-driven approach to hiring and talent development, Korch said.

“We see opportunities, going forward, in terms of resource efficiencies, and one of the key assumptions that we have in our strategies and our priorities in FY 24 is workforce management, and rolling out workforce management across all 37 of our resorts,” Korch said. “Beyond that, also continuing to invest in guest self-service, which creates efficiencies as well as automation.”

Korch said all of this should help the company achieve profit margins of higher than 30% in the future.

“I feel very good about the 31 percent margin that we’re going to achieve, and believe that there is opportunity going forward, given the scale of the business,” Korch said. “And the investments we’ve made in integrated networks will give us the opportunity to unlock some additional margin expansion in the future.”

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