I’m often surprised at how many people perceive the ski industry and how it’s affected by the economy. Lot’s of people think that ski resorts and their quests are isolated from the downturn of the economy because of the perception that skiing or snowboarding are wealthy people’s sports. While skiing is expensive and many resorts cater to people that are willing to pay a little extra for their vacations, the spectrum of people that ski is wide and most of these people have jobs, families, and mortgages. Those three things right there are going to come before skiing and that is why some economists are predicting that this winter will not be a good one for resorts across the United States. While last year saw records shattered across the country, it was ahead of the $4 plus a gallon cost for gas, the surge in oil prices, and let’s not forget about the airlines – a lot of resorts count on travelers who comes from away. While there have been several signs of this in the east and they have been reported on locally, I think that a good indicator is with the country’s only publically traded ski resort holding company, Vail Resorts. The owner of Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Heavenly, Vail Resorts shares have tumbled recently, falling for the low $40’s to the mid to low $20 range. The stocks fell further this week as Wall Street analysts downgraded Vail’s status from a stock to buy to one to hold off on. Some people were surprised that Vail Resorts would be so directly impacted. Just look at the list of resorts and you see five extremely large destination resorts that each draw near to or over a million skier visits each year, but many of these people comes from all over the United States and get to the respective resorts by plane. In case you haven’t heard, airline tickets are expected to double in price by early next year. That’s a big punch in the stomach to some of these resorts. While Vail in Colorado and Heavenly, which straddles the border of Nevada and California, may be more insulated because of their massive European share of visitors and the weak dollar, there’s no promise that those numbers will hold. In all, it should be an interesting time for skiers and riders all over the country and a time where resorts will need to make cost cutting changes to help manage their places in the market in the hopes of drawing and retaining skiers and riders.
