Will Economic Slowdown CrimP visits?
U.S. consumers are not just hunkering down, they “are in the fetal position,” new Vail COO Chris Jarnot said at the Mountain Travel Symposium in Vail April 9. Other panelists had data to back that up: Phillip Wolf, CEO of market research company PhoCusWright, noted that call volume and reservations are down in the travel/hotel business generally, and Peter Yesawich of the National Travel Monitor said that, in his latest survey, 16 percent of travelers say they will take fewer trips. More ominously, for the first time they cited the economy, not a lack of free time, as the reason. "Value-oriented consumers are shopping aggressively” for the best deals, he said. Even high-income households are trading down. Whether consumers become less defensive by next winter depends on the length and severity of the recession the U.S. appears to have entered.


Resort Towns Need New “Social Contract”
Mountain Travel Symposium keynoter Rick Barrera encouraged resorts to “overpromise and overdeliver” to build business, and he was convincing. But Myles Rademan, public affairs officer for the town of Park City, was quick to remind resorts how difficult delivery can be. He declared that the battle going on over the future of ski towns, between wealthy Boomers and the rank and file younger generations that staff and run the towns and resorts, must be settled first. Wealthy homeowners and visitors may not be feeling the recession, he said, but the employees who man the resorts are. The social contract in these towns, which was based on egalitarianism, has been broken. That relationship needs to be repaired if we’re going to “overdeliver.” If people don’t feel they have a stake in the town or resort, they won’t have the passion that everyone agrees is so important, he said. Those communities that re-engage in that conversation will win, he predicted.

Others in the audience noted that this is a key trend, and it’s not being dealt with. Vail’s Chris Jarnot punctuated that by admitting that Vail closed on April 13 not for lack of snow or visitor interest, but for lack of employees to staff the resort.


Not Your Average Mom and Pop Area
Oh, the problems of being a mom and pop--er, husband and wife--resort ownership. According to Edra Blixseth, estranged wife of Tim Blixseth, the owner of the Yellowstone Club, the ski world’s most famous private club is experiencing a liquidity crisis and on the verge of bankruptcy. According to Tim’s people, that’s just bunk. With the duo engaged in a bruising divorce battle in California, Edra is seeking reinstatement as Yellowstone’s COO and removal of Tim as club manager and banishment from the club’s offices.

Something’s up: the Club missed a deadline to pay a $20 million settlement, and a deal to sell the club to a Boston investor fell through earlier this spring. Edra claims the Club can’t raise enough cash without fire-sale prices for lots. A Yellowstone spokesman acknowledged that payments were late but have been flowing to several vendors in the wake of a $15 million sale.

Even so, the club in early April reportedly had $4.6 million in the bank, with real estate sales in 2008 roughly on par with 2007, when $95 million in deals closed. That should help with cash flow. It better or else: Yellowstone is making payments on a $375 million loan from Credit Suisse, with about $306 million principal remaining.


Mt. Holly Club Has Payment Issues, too
Well, maybe it isn’t mom-and-pops that are the problem; maybe it’s the whole resort club concept. In April, Dow Jones & Co. (read: The Wall Street Journal) said the Mount Holly Club resort, which would rise from the ashes of the former Elk Meadows ski area, owes more than $586,000 for advertisements it bought in March 2007. The ads themselves drew a surprising response; one ad claimed the resort would run ski lifts and snow cats up to 12,000-foot-high Mount Holly. However, the peak is on national forest land where motorized equipment is restricted, and the Forest Service asked the club to stop the advertisements. The Club argues that claims such as the one by Dow Jones often occur on large development projects. Note to Club: that’s not the way publishers typically treat their advertisers.


Shrinking dollar Makes U.S. Attractive
U.S. resorts continue to lead the world in the cost of a full-price lift ticket, but discounts and the shrinking dollar have made the U.S. very attractive, according to The World Lift Ticket Price Report. That helped Vail report a 23 percent jump in international visits in its quarterly report in January.

Vail remains the world’s most expensive peak season six day lift ticket, at $552. But overall, the difference between the U.S. and the rest of the world has shrunk; average six-day, high-season, lift ticket price is $365.73 in the U.S., $258 worldwide. The average price for a group of 50 U.S. resorts places the U.S. fourth among nations, behind Australia, South Africa and Dubai. And that doesn’t take into account the generous non-holiday and shoulder-season discounts that are common in the U.S. (Vail discounts advance low season tickets on the Internet up to $235) but rare elsewhere.

With the Canadian dollar now virtually equal to the U.S. dollar, the price advantages of travel to Canada have largely evaporated. For example, the Ski Big 3 Pass that covers Sunshine, Lake Louise and Mount Norquay is one of two Canadian tickets in the top 10 most expensive. And the off-peak price for the Ski Big 3 ticket drops only a few bucks, from $497 to $485.

In a further turning of the price tables, formerly expensive ski nations Germany and Japan are now among the most affordable. Europe’s most expensive ticket is a $377 pass covering 500 miles of ski runs at a dozen resorts around Chamonix in France. The most expensive six-day lift tickets for a single resort in Europe are at Sierra Nevada, Spain, $320.

Among the world’s cheapest destinations, at less than $150 for six days, were resorts in Iran and the former Balkan war zones of Kosovo, Macedonia and Sarajevo, site of the 1984 Winter Olympics. The cheapest? The one-chair Parque Caviahue in Argentina, yours for six days for just $28.70.


Snowlingo Contest Comes Up Speechless
It was a wonderful concept, really. Ski Utah wanted to finally come up with a single, little word that means “skiing and snowboarding” so that all of us can leave that mouthful in the past, along with Christiania and gelandesprung. And what did the collective genius of the wired world come up with? The old Warren Miller film title made generically lower-case: snowriders. Perhaps you still can’t capture the two sports with one word. After all, you’d think that the top prize, a spring week in Utah, would have generated a bit more creativity, if such a union of the sports were possible. More promising concoctions were “gnardonculous,” “snowcrastinator,” and “snowgasm,” all of which seem pretty self-explanatory.


Going Black and Blue at DIA and SLC
In an effort to speed airline passengers through the security process, airports in Denver and Salt Lake City are experimenting with a green-circle, blue-square, black-diamond self-rating system. Green was for families and others who need lots of attention, black was for frequent travelers who know the ropes, and blue was for, well, everyone else.

How did it work? According to Chuck Cannon, public affairs director for DIA, it has worked well. The airport has dropped the blue-square option; instead, it uses one lane each for the green and black symbols, and all other lanes are unmarked. Travelers at the extremes tend to take the opportunity to self-select and choose the appropriate lanes. The two-week test had gone on for a month at press time, with no end in sight. Will other airports adopt the idea? Probably depends on how big the local ski/ride population is.


The Midwest Rules!
First, Midwest areas urged ski manufacturers to create durable, shaped rental skis, which are now marketed worldwide. Next, Boyne and Peak Resorts bought a couple handfuls of Northeastern areas and have began to update them, adding modern fan gun technology and state-of-the-art lifts. And then they convinced a few progressive ski suppliers to abandon the age-old practice of stamping measurements in centimeters (what American understands that measuring system?) and replace it with small, medium, large, and extra large, which are recognized the world over. Is there no limit to this region’s power?


Shortswings
There’s still only one Aspen: a Utah developer’s plan to incorporate a new resort town named Aspen failed when residents voted for annexation to an existing town. The Utah Supreme Court threw out the developer’s plea for relief. . . New York state police charged Titus Mountain GM Zachary White with illegally siphoning “hundreds of thousands of dollars” of electricity from the electric grid over the past three years, and possibly millions over the past decade; if he’s found guilty, it would constitute the largest theft ever from the national grid.