Skier visits in the US up 11%, per NSAA

[dbostedo]

Saw this on @SkiEssentials blog, and surprised I don't see anything here on it yet. Skier visits in the US were up 11% this season over last year. Certainly good snow is a large part of the reason.

A snippet from the report :

"Visitation grew the most in the Pacific Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, by 22.9 percent and 15.6 percent respectively over the previous season. While extreme winter storms provided some challenges in both regions, ultimately the snowy days proved a draw for powder-seeking skiers and snowboarders. Total visitation numbers were highest in the Rocky Mountain region at over 24 million (a record year for the region), followed by the Northeast with approximately 12.7 million."

http://www.nsaa.org/media/362497/Apr2019_SkierDays1819.pdf

I wonder how much of "the Ikon effect" is really captured in just the overall increase in visits. You'd need a bunch more data to really tease that out (if it's even possible to really figure out). But good snow does bring out more skiers.

 

[James]

Rocky Mt broke their record.

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Visits are defined by the purchase of a lift ticket for any portion of the day and the figures include season pass holders. The strong performance was announced at the National Ski Areas Association National Convention and Tradeshow in San Diego, and more data should be released later this year.

Traffic to Vail Resorts’ properties is included in the association’s totals, though as a publicly traded company, Vail Resorts closely guards the release of skier visits at its resorts.

However, the company had a good season on the whole. According to information released last week, season-to-date lift-ticket revenue at the company’s North American mountain resorts — including an allocated portion of season pass revenue for each applicable period — was up 9.3% over the previous year season-to-date period.
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https://www.postindependent.com/new...ord-with-24-million-skier-visits-this-winter/

Lifties no longer have access to number of visitors on their scanning guns. They used to have that info. Vail restricts it.

 

[pchewn]

I don't believe these statistics because at Mt Hood Skibowl (aka "Freebowl"), I skied several days on my pass without ever being checked in line. So did I get counted as a skier visit?

They are regularly under-staffed and don't check for tickets.

 

[Tricia]

Saw this on @SkiEssentials blog, and surprised I don't see anything here on it yet. Skier visits in the US were up 11% this season over last year. Certainly good snow is a large part of the reason.

A snippet from the report :

"Visitation grew the most in the Pacific Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, by 22.9 percent and 15.6 percent respectively over the previous season. While extreme winter storms provided some challenges in both regions, ultimately the snowy days proved a draw for powder-seeking skiers and snowboarders. Total visitation numbers were highest in the Rocky Mountain region at over 24 million (a record year for the region), followed by the Northeast with approximately 12.7 million."

http://www.nsaa.org/media/362497/Apr2019_SkierDays1819.pdf

I wonder how much of "the Ikon effect" is really captured in just the overall increase in visits. You'd need a bunch more data to really tease that out (if it's even possible to really figure out). But good snow does bring out more skiers.

That explains a lot about the overall feeling of everyplace being crowded.
Snow was and continues to be really good. We're skiing at A-Basin, and Loveland this week, both of which are skiing like its mid winter.

 

[dbostedo]

I don't believe these statistics because at Mt Hood Skibowl (aka "Freebowl"), I skied several days on my pass without ever being checked in line. So did I get counted as a skier visit?

They are regularly under-staffed and don't check for tickets.

Well of course they can't be completely accurate. But they are done the same year over year, so the comparison to prior years should be indicative.

 

[James]

Visits are defined by the purchase of a lift ticket for any portion of the day and the figures include season pass holders. The strong performance was announced at the National Ski Areas Association National Convention and Tradeshow in San Diego, and more data should be released later this year.

I don't believe these statistics because at Mt Hood Skibowl (aka "Freebowl"), I skied several days on my pass without ever being checked in line. So did I get counted as a skier visit?

They are regularly under-staffed and don't check for tickets.

You were counted as a pass holder. See above. Now, how many days per pass do they count? Details are few.

 

[Ogg]

My personal skier visits are up ~300% over the previous year and more than 1000% over the year before that.

 

[Tricia]

My personal skier visits are up ~300% over the previous year and more than 1000% over the year before that.

 

[Ogg]

It sounds more impressive than it is when you put it in %.

 

[dbostedo]

It sounds more impressive than it is when you put it in %.

If you take a season off and then ski at all the following year, you could (sort-of) say you skied infinitely more than the prior season.

 

[fatbob]

Hmm Ikon effect hits across all resorts regardless of ownership or pass validity. That's a mighty powerful pass. Presumably the stats when broken down are DV up 6000% everywhere else down.

 

[Johnny V.]

Guess I'm a slacker-my personal visits were only up 9.5 %...............................must be old age.

 

[Goran M.]

Investment opportunity ...

Sell ... !!!

 

[Sibhusky]

You were counted as a pass holder. See above. Now, how many days per pass do they count? Details are few.

I'm pretty sure that since my pass gets scanned every day, each day is a skier visit. Otherwise here, the counts would be pretty much useless, being as 50% of the bodies are locals. They usually have a midday headcount message that goes out to the staff. Since they're collecting usage stats for every lift, not counting the passholders would mean their staffing around the mountain would be out of whack. If someone is MIA, their knowledge of the fact that a skier was last seen at a certain lift wouldn't be there, you get the idea.

The fact that one day one guy managed to not get scanned anywhere is unlikely, but not a noticeable impact to their data gathering. I'm sure it happens, I know the odd guy who prides themselves on not getting scanned, but there not enough of them to undermine the effort.

They frequently publish stats about popular lifts, or the fact that a particular lift isn't getting used as much as it used to be because of other lifts, whatever. They use it for future planning, forest service permit applications, staffing, operational decisions, on and on.

I'm sure there's places out there like Turner that turn the lights on in the AM and let the skiers essentially run the place themselves on the honor system, but any place serious about being in business wants as much data as they can get.
====
On a different note, even though our snow levels were down here noticeably compared to the last two seasons, they set a new record for attendance. And we're not on any fancy pass aggregation. Yes, they give you free days at places you would never go to, but that's only a good deal if you were going to be at those places anyway. (Or driving from Florida, like Fuller.) Apparently scoring well in readers surveys in SKI year after year is actually doing something. :-(

 

[mister moose]

Skier visits in the US were up 11% this season over last year. Certainly good snow is a large part of the reason.

I wonder how much of "the Ikon effect" is really captured in just the overall increase in visits. You'd need a bunch more data to really tease that out (if it's even possible to really figure out). But good snow does bring out more skiers.

Yes, good snow does bring out more skiers. But now a dose of reality. Remember, this is the industry that calls hardpack "packed powder" and death cookies is "machine groomed loose granular"

So looking without applying any math at all, we can see that for the last 20 years national skier visits have been A) fairly steady, and B) bouncing around 60 million visits. Even though this graph is missing 2012-2018, I'm not at all motivated to go search the internet any further, as I'll bet anyone in the room a beer that the missing data is right around 60 million per year.

So the fact that visits this year are up 11% speaks more to last year's low number than this year's big number. This year's number really isn't very big at all, it's just... packed powder.

If the Ikon and Epic pass are spurring significantly more skier visits, they haven't shown up yet.

 

[Sibhusky]

And you would be right. Not even 60.

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2019/05/01/skier-visits-this-season/

Excluding the most recent season:

 

[dbostedo]

Yes... but I don't think anyone was implying that an 11% rise this year over last is indicative of any larger/longer increase trend.

 

[DanoT]

My home home mountain, Sun Peaks, set a new single day skier visit record of 7,000 on the Saturday between Xmas and NYE. That number included XC skiers and a factored in % to account for those getting by the scanner guy/gal.
In each of the preceding 3 seasons new skier visit records were set but not this past season. With an unusually mild Nov. to Jan., followed by the coldest Feb. in over 80 years in B.C., skiers visits by locals were down. It was a decent snow year but not a great powder year.

Revelstoke was part of the Ikon pass and given its remoteness and some of the weather issues listed above, I wonder how their skier visits stack up for this past season when compared to previous winters?

 

[Uncle-A]

A good economy and good snow will do the trick and if they both last it will continue.

 

[Brad J]

I can't stand scanning, At BS they scanned at 3:57, RFID doesn't bother me as much. I realize it's important to have the data at areas but so over zelious scanning is do to the fact that the attendants are compensated for fraud passes. I know it's me , I never leave my pass dangling . I have lost then and broke them off in trees.
I skied 2 days at MRG this year and there is no one even remotely checking tickets . It's a step back where skiing, skiers are more community oriented. And yes I am getting older