There are some legitimate reasons to be skeptical of multi-resort passes and their effects on the ski industry. That said, this article is incredibly lazy, and has a bunch of holes in it.
In the wake of Vail’s 2017 acquisition of Stowe, in Vermont, real estate prices, which weren’t cheap before, rose notably, according to Gayle Oberg of the locally based Little River Realty. “There’s been a significant difference. Prices are as high as we’ve seen,” says Oberg, who originally moved to Stowe to ski bum in 1973.
Where's the evidence that Vail's purchase of Stowe
caused the real estate prices to increase? Logically, are people really buying homes or second-homes at Stowe because all of a sudden it went from being owned by AIG to being owned by Vail? Let's take a look at the chart below which plots Zillow's "home value index" for Stowe alongside Burlington, VT and Boston, MA. The vertical line is for February, 2017, when Vail announced that they were acquiring Stowe.
Home prices in Stowe have certainly risen since February, 2017, but so have prices in the nearby city of Burlington, and also in New England's biggest city, Boston. During the timeframe of February, 2017 to the present, the economy and the stock market have been doing incredibly, and prices have risen all over New England. In short, I would like to see additional evidence that Vail's purchase of Stowe is
causing the price increases.
Big Sky, Montana, was recently added to the Ikon Pass network, and already locals are feeling the housing squeeze. “All the affordable long-term rentals we had before this year are now off the market and seem to be on VRBO,” said a longtime local and resort employee, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their job. “It’s priced out all the people that support this town. I know of resort employees living in tents in the forest. People here are really pissed off.”
As a matter of public policy, why don't ski towns consider regulating rental properties? The city that I live in, Cambridge, MA, is extremely touristy, and
we passed laws regulating short-term rentals as a ton of property in Cambridge was showing up platforms like Airbnb.
More importantly, Big Sky has been and will be investing over a hundred millions dollars in a huge plan called
Big Sky 2025. This plan has been available at least since August 2016, long before Big Sky went on the IKON Pass. The way that they pay for this plan is with increased visitation and/or higher prices! Whether it was being on the IKON Pass or spending a huge amount on marketing, Big Sky was going to try and attract a lot of new customers one way or the other. The writing was on the wall.
For about seven years, residents of Squaw Valley, California—core skiers if there ever were any—have worked to oppose a huge development proposal at the base of Squaw by KSL Capital, a founding partner of Alterra. They fear thousands of more tourists, heavier traffic, high-rise hotels, a lower quality of life, and significant environmental impacts.
Without knowing details of KSL's development plan, I wonder if local residents realize that opposing this development actually goes against many of their goals? If the face of growing demand, increasing supply is really the only way to bring down or stabilize prices. Wouldn't you rather have out-of-town guests clustered in a few high-rise hotels near the base of Squaw than many of them staying in nearby towns, causing owners to list more and more property on VBRO/Airbnb? And these out-of-towners will be contributing to traffic by driving to/from their accommodations instead of being able to do ski-in/ski-out? One lesson I've learned from my interest in urban planning is that the best thing to do with a whole bunch of folks with money is to cluster them all into one place, leaving the rest of the space for everyone else. In cities, that means letting the rich live in a cluster of high-rises, leaving the triple deckers surrounding neighborhoods for the less well-off. The same thing applies to ski towns. If you don't accommodate increased demand with increased supply, prices go up. IKON might be driving some of this demand, but a lot of it is also coming from population growth in the West and great snow.
“The U.S. ski industry is facing… increasing prices, paid by a declining number of customers,” analysts wrote in the 2018 International Report on Snow and Mountain Tourism. “This tends to make ski[ing] less affordable… especially for the beginners, who usually purchase daily passes…. The business model of the large U.S. resorts [can be summarized as trying to get] always more money from always less customers.”
I agree with the premise that increased day ticket costs makes it harder for beginners to get into the sport.
The business model of trying to get more money from fewer customers would actually make a lot of locals that are complaining about the IKON Pass happy though, right? You can't complain about both costs and crowding. One is very much a function of the other.
Vail reportedly tried involuntarily cramming 100 more beds into its Keystone employee housing. The plan was to add two more residents per select two- and three-bedroom units, increasing the occupancy of those to four- and five-person units, respectively, creating a college-dorm-like situation.
I agree that this is shitty thing for Vail to do. Ski resorts can and should do more to house employees. But if ski towns, which heavily restrict supply, make an effort to increase supply to meet demand, there wouldn't be as much of a need for subsidized housing. I know that land is scarce in ski towns, but land is also scarce in big cities. We've basically solved this issue: building up. You might not like the idea of a seven story hulking apartment building being built in a quaint ski town, but that's how to house a lot of people in a small space.
Sorry about the long rant. Again, this is a very real issue, but the article was not very well written. Instead of hand waving and anecdotes, I want to see some real analysis done on the effects that multi-resort passes have on skiing.
