Don’t Give Up the Night Job
April 6th, 2009Posted in Skiing Everywhere
It looks like it’s been a tough year for ski instructors and real estate agents in ski towns. We all know about the piling up of inventories of unsold properties across ski country and I’d heard anecdotal reports of a fall off in ski lessons. At last week’s Mountain Travel Symposium, an annual affair where mountain resort travel professionals mingle and plan for the next winter, Vail Resort’s CEO Rob Katz reported his company’s winter in which it saw, “ huge declines…particularly in peak weeks and ski school. They got clobbered this year.” So I guess ski instructors really did take a hit this year. I know more than a few people who split their time between being a ski instructor and and a real estate sales person. Ouch. Lucky are those who had a third job, working nights in bars and restaurants- I guess.
Unfortunately, Mr. Katz had more to say about the decline in ski business, “I think that impact is going to be felt dramatically in local communities in the next two weeks. The health of these local communities is at stake.”
He also said that high-end retailing was another area hit very hard in Vail- home of lots of high-end retailing. I have talked recently with some shop owning friends in Jackson and they agreed vacationing skiers were definitely going easy on their credit cards, spending mainly on lodging, food and lift tickets. I’ve heard rumors about shops closing at the end of ski season, as per usual, but who will not re-open for the summer- they’re done for good.
Was there any talk of recovery at the conference? Business people have to be optimists, so some of the guest speakers ventured predictions of business continuing on its current lowered plane for a couple of years and then a pick-up 3-5 years out, but one hedged saying he’d heard people thinking in terms of 10 years.
Ah, but there was good news too- for us cost conscious skiers. Trend forecaster and business consultant Dr. Lalia Rach said, “People are demanding value and quality, and everything is negotiable.” Consumers are looking to find bargains on luxury items. More importantly for the mountain travel industry, they also want bargain prices on their vacations, she said.
I hope the resort management people heed her words and respond with better pricing to lure me and the rest of us to their resorts more often.
Even more good news from Dr. Rach-”We are now repairing, not replacing. We are, for the first time, telling our kids, you don’t need 10 pairs of sneakers. We are cutting back.” Mike Shannon of the posh KSL Resorts group echoed Rach saying “We’re prioritizing and simplifying our lives and focusing on the essentials like product quality, affordability, and being good custodians of our planet by purchasing fewer products and generating less waste.” Can he really be talking about McMansion owning Hummer driving Americans? Let’s hope so.
CEO Katz did bring up a good point about the American ski resort world, compared to most other sectors of the economy where oversupply will mean no growth, or slow growth for a long time, in the American ski resort world there isn’t much excess of supply.
I think the millions of skiers in the U.S. will continue to give skiing a high priority in their lives. They have a lot invested in it emotionally- and in gear- and often in second homes. They will surely not easily switch to other pastimes as a replacement. How often and how much they spend on skiing is the question, determined by their financial and employment status- and by how good a value ski resorts offer them. The ball is clearly in the resorts’ court.
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