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IKON Pass Announces Current Plans for Winter 2020-2021

tball

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I have trouble imaging the usual crowd around XMAS this year. I'm not convinced they will materialize.
My feeling is school breaks will be crowded at ski areas within driving distance of large metro areas. All the normal indoor activities to keep kids active through the winter will be severely restricted, so families will want to go skiing, especially with the sunk cost of a season pass.
 

Ron

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Lol. We’re not screwed at all. I don’t normally ski during xmas week. I may go Up For first chair and get off the mountain after an hour or so but I hope we are busy, lots of bizs and instructors are counting on it
 

Jtlange

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What percentage of families will give up if hot food and warm lodges aren't available this season?

How many bros whose beer at the bar to laps ratio is 1:1 will say F* it and stay home?

There will be skiing. My van will still have oatmeal made in the morning before skiing pow laps behind @Ron 's house.

My god I hope the Bros stay home because its not worth it. I will be sad for the families, but I wont miss the Beer Bros.
 

palikona

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What percentage of families will give up if hot food and warm lodges aren't available this season?

How many bros whose beer at the bar to laps ratio is 1:1 will say F* it and stay home?

There will be skiing. My van will still have oatmeal made in the morning before skiing pow laps behind @Ron 's house.

I’m thinking many.
 

musicmatters

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Deer Valley announced today no group ski lessons for children under 7. From 7-12 year olds only 1/2 day afternoon lessons. All other lessons are private.

That will be a huge dent in revenue to not have an option for the younger kids. And if families don’t have an option for ski school how many families just won’t go?

I think even with reduced capacity there will be a significant reduction in people showing up to the mountain.
 

Slim

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Yeah, @Tricia , I’m with @mikel .
the fact that Ikon says most resorts won’t require reservations is not very reassuring.

My family bought 4 full Ikon passes, with the idea of doing two trips of ~ 8 days each to places like Aspen and the Cottonwoods. We need to book them, the flights, car rental and the accommodations ahead of time. And they are during school breaks/holidays.


I am ok with a reservation system as long as the capacity is there. What would be a major issue is showing up somewhere, planning to ski and finding out they decided to limit Ikon.

i got an email from Alterra on Solitude ‘letterhead’ and they say they are limiting the undated pass products. Our Ikon is undated.
 
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fatbob

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One thing that occurs to me is the "wait and see" factor also applies to Ikon passholders. If Alterra doesn't want to commit to a policy/booking system to 9 November then there will be a bunch of Ikonites who say - well I'll preserve my optionality for rollover by not using days until I know how the season is looking (easy to do where you have to travel or where you have a backup local pass). So we could see really low demand early season (and even through Xmas) as everyone sits on their hands - then a flood as everyone says "you know what looks like there is plenty of space to ski this season" possibly even encouraged by marketing as resorts get desperate about low visitation?
 

Ron

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check out what steamboat just did. if you bundle lodging and tickets you can lock your dates in as long as you order before Nov 2. I think that's pretty clever.
 

fatbob

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If there is going to be an universal resort reservation system, then I'd expect no company to be able to build/adjust/test a fully functional system by this current ski year. I'd expect many bugs to be worked out as the 2020 ski panned out if there's going to be a ski year


I know the answer is "IT system" but I guess my question is why?

You need an input number of slots available each day - at the beginning this could be manual e.g. someone going through the calendar and determining a number of slots

You need to validate pass no against the pass database

User then picks slots available

Pass is whitelisted for the dates booked (strictly needn't happen until night before)


Difficulty comes when you try to get dynamic around slot availability and start doing all sorts of modelling in system but on a basic level something could be built.

Wouldn't be entirely fair as one would expect manual slot number to need to be somewhat prudent and hence availability might skew to "week of" reservations. Which for "planners" may feel somewhat unfair.
 

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