Name: How Vail Changed the Economics of the Entire Ski Industry
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T17:00:00Z
Duration: 10 min 49 s
Description: Vail Resorts built the world’s largest ski company by reshaping how and when people pay to ski. The strategy has both revolutionized the ski business and led to some unintended consequences.

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Vail Resorts built the world’s largest ski company by reshaping how and when people pay to ski. The strategy has both revolutionized the ski business and led to some unintended consequences. Photo: Daniel Vergara

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260225/76b54497-21c5-4820-981e-cc3fb02c9970/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Vail Resorts built the world’s largest ski company by reshaping how and when people pay to ski. The strategy has both revolutionized the ski business and led to some unintended consequences.

How Vail Changed the Economics of the Entire Ski Industry

I am here at Vail where I'm spreading out my legs. I've got a chairlift all to myself. The snow's not great. It's pretty icy. It's exactly the sort of day that makes selling lots of Epic Passes very important. Over the past two decades, decades, Vail has completely reinvented the skiing industry with Epic Pass, a heavily discounted season pass that can be used at any of its resorts.

How we doing?

Great, how are you?

Good, Julie.

Thanks.

All right.

The Pass has become so popular that Vail now collects almost a billion dollars in revenue before the skiing season starts each year.

Do you know what the Epic Pass is?

Yeah, we already have that.

Oh, you got it? Do you have an Epic Pass?

Yeah, of course, Epic Pass.

I do have it.

Oh, you wanna show me your Epic Pass?

Come on.

You got an Epic Pass.

What would typically happen in the skiing industry, you know, back 20, 30 years ago was that you'd wait to see, was this a good skiing year? Did it snow a lot? If we didn't have good snow, then no one would come to the resort because they felt like the experience wasn't what they wanted. There was a real sense that, you know, if you worked in the skiing industry, it was, you're almost a snow farmer.

How does that affect the skiing business' ability to survive and what happens when you aren't bringing enough money to pay for the overhead costs that a skiing resort has?

Yeah, I think it creates a lot of challenges. There's a lot of expense that goes into just opening the skiing resort 'cause you have to obviously prepare all the slopes, and you have to have all of skiing patrol, gotta run all the lifts, all the guest service areas, and dining and all the different things that people need on a mountain because this is an experience that's happening in the outdoors. And then beyond that, it's electricity and fuel, obviously, to run the resort. And so you had a lot of skiing resorts at that time that were struggling.

Roberto: An unreliable revenue stream and enormous fixed costs. Not exactly a recipe for success. In 1991, there were almost 550 skiing resorts in the US. By 2008, more than 70 of them had closed.

We got the team together and said, "Okay, how do we change the profile of the industry?" And so what we talked about was, well, would it be possible to get people to buy their skiing before the season? I think people laughed 'cause that sounded funny, because who would buy their skiing before the season even started? And obviously they wouldn't know what the season was gonna be like in terms of snow. But if we gave people a big enough discount on the price, maybe they would actually do that.

Roberto: Prior to Epic, a season pass at just Vail Mountain in Beaver Creek cost more than $1,800. In 2008, when Epic Pass launched, it was only $579. You could skiing as much as you wanted at any of the company's six resorts. All you had to do was commit early.

People thought we were idiots and had made a mistake, and so there was this rush to buy it because they thought we were gonna realize the mistake and raise the price. But we had a product that we knew could actually really right change the nature of our company.

Roberto: That year Vail made almost $80 million from the pass, and it's made more and more every year since.

All of a sudden it went from this, "Well, I'm not sure whether we'll have the money," to saying, "Oh no, no, no. We've got this consistent source of revenue."

Roberto: In the nearly two decades since launching Epic Pass, Vail has gone on an extended shopping spree, buying up mountain after mountain to improve the reach and scale of its Epic Pass business. It now owns 42 skiing resorts around the world and controls about 1/5 of all skiing traffic in North America. So how has it affected the business of Vail?

It's been transformational. I think it really shifted the entire ecosystem of the skiing industry.

Roberto: Today, Vail sells different kinds of Epic products, including single day passes, but it's their Mega Pass that gives people access to their full roster of mountains that's redefined the skiing industry. It's led to major competition including Icon Pass, which features a similarly large and varied array of well-known resorts. It's also had some unintended consequences. One of the critiques that people have about Epic Pass broadly, and about changes at Vail Resorts Mountains is that the price of lift tickets has gone up and it has forced others or pushed lift tickets up across the industry. Do you think that that is a fair criticism?

I think it's a fair point. This was an industry-wide, ultimately global transformation that happened that our company absolutely led. And part of that was making the season pass absolute best opportunity that you could have. And then making a lift ticket more expensive. If you're going to walk up to a skiing resort and buy a lift ticket, you're not giving the skiing resort any advanced commitment.

Roberto: Epic Pass now costs around a thousand dollars, while single day lift tickets can run upwards of $300 at Vail's top tier resorts.

Lift Rider: It keeps going.

Roberto: Meanwhile, the popularity of Mega Passes has driven more people to those same mountains, sometimes too many, especially on good snow days.

Oh my God!

Oh my God!

YouTuber: This is what happens, victim of its own success.

Roberto: How seriously do you take that issue with those complaints?

There is a, I think, a little bit of a concern that if we make the sport more accessible and more people come that it will be overcrowded. Our job is to ensure the vitality of this industry 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. In our minds, the way you deal with crowding is that, yeah, you're investing in the lifts, you're investing in infrastructure, you're investing in parking, you're ensuring that actually you're providing a better experience for people when they come.

Roberto: Vail has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to install larger and faster lifts. It also now shares live lift wait times. What about the practical experience of going to a mountain? If there are a lot of people, you're waiting for a very long time to get on a lift. The the trails are very crowded.

We actually are not seeing more people at our resort on peak days, we've actually seen the incidents of crowding go down.

So it's in their heads?

No, I think at every single resort you will have a moment of crowding all the time, and it's always been that way. So when I started skiing back in the '70s, it was crowded. And you actually waited longer on a lift then because the lifts were slow.

The notion that it's gotten worse, you're saying...

It hasn't, it has not gotten worse.

Roberto: Vail says that last season its lift lines were under 10 minutes 97% of the time. But that's an average across all of Vail's mountains in North America, which helps obscure spikes on busy days at the company's most popular resorts. There is a perception, at least among some skiers, that the rise of Epic has eroded the skiing experience, and that's led to alternatives like Indie Pass, which focuses on smaller, locally owned resorts and positions itself as not another multi-resort pass product. It's also helped fully independent resorts refine their sales pitch. I at Whitefish Mountain in Montana. It's one of the many indie mountains around the country that are not part of Epic Pass, not part of Icon Pass, not part of any of the national passes. Whitefish Mountain is one of the largest fully independent skiing resorts in North America with more skiable acres than Jackson Hole, Breckenridge, and Beaver Creek. How often do you make it out of the slopes?

I try to get out half the days we're open. And our season is about 120 days a year, give or take. So I target 55 to 60 days a year. Just so I'm out talking to the guests, talking to staff.

Roberto: Nick Polumbus has been at Whitefish for almost 20 years. He wanted to show me firsthand what it's like to ski on the mountain. What does it mean to be an independent mountain today?

It means more and more every year. You know, I think that our ability to kind of stand on our own two feet and not be associated with other resorts, I think there's, the marketplace is looking for that right now, more and more. And so it's become something of, we think, an advantage of ours.

Roberto: Is it a vibes thing or is it like a practical thing?

Nick: It's a practical thing and a vibe thing. Skiing is an expensive sport, but we found a way to keep it within check. There's not pricing decisions being dictated to us by, you know, other resorts or other products for other resorts. And then, it is a vibe thing, that attracts a certain type of person, right? It's that person that is more interested in the skiing itself and in the outdoor experience.

Roberto: Despite its size, Whitefish remains relatively affordable. A single day lift ticket is $115,

Even at $99 or $110, it's not inexpensive to go skiing, but it certainly looks a lot better than $300.

How at Whitefish do you manage to keep prices low and not go under?

We stay focused on the core components to the experience and we don't chase a lot of the bells and the whistles that a lot of other places, I think, do.

Roberto: Their strategy seems to be paying off. Total skiing visits at Whitefish have increased by more than 50% over the past decade. Meanwhile, at Vail, Epic sales have started to plateau. The company has sold fewer passes in each of the past two years. What do you think is going on?

I would say that, you know, we grew Epic Pass sales. If you look over the last four years by about 50%. I think when you have that kind of explosive growth over a few years, it's not surprising that we might come down one or two points.

Roberto: People aren't just buying fewer Epic Passes. They also appear to be taking their skiing elsewhere. Last year, skiing visits at North American resorts grew by almost 3 million, but at Vail's resorts in the region, they fell by 400,000. The rest of the industry did all right last year. It actually grew.

Absolutely.

The questions not about skiing in general so much as like Vail specifically.

No, absolutely and I would say, I think when I look back to last year, we were not selling lift tickets as successfully as other resorts were selling them. And in part that's because it was not our focus and priority given this kind of historical focus on the pass business.

Roberto: Normal lift tickets might not be the bread and butter of Vail's business anymore, but they still account for more than 1/3 of its lift revenue.

Now, like, we need to focus on that daily lift tickets. So one of the things we did this year was the Epic Friends ticket. So we said, "Hey, if you come with somebody who already has a pass, we're gonna give you 50% off." We also came up with a program that says, "Hey, if you're gonna be willing to commit to your lift ticket and make your booking 30 days in advance, we'll give you 30% off."

Roberto: Of course, the true measure of success will be how many people Vail manages to convert into returning Epic Pass holders.

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