Our Advice to Consumers and Resorts in the Age of Limited Capacity
Arapahoe Basin’s reopening today has given hundreds the opportunity to get in a few more turns before the 2019-20 season truly ends. But it also paints a stark picture of the challenges ski resorts may face in the months to come.
The first and only Colorado ski resort to reopen following COVID-19 shutdowns, A-Basin planned to allow first-come, first-serve tickets and reservations 36 hours before each operating day. But at the time of this writing—two days later—the ski area is allocating spots through a lottery system handled by Google Forms because its existing reservation system was unable to handle abnormally high traffic. It’s unclear if or when the original reservation structure will be implemented.
Three other U.S. resorts, Mt. Baldy, Mt. Bachelor, and Timberline, also reopened after quarantine measures were first imposed. As far as we know, these resorts never experienced any major issues with their reservation systems. However, there’s no way to know if these resorts saw major traffic spikes at any given time.
With indications that social distancing measures may not be completely loosened until well into next year, it’s quite possible that ski resorts will have to severely limit capacity for part or all of the 2020-21 season. Given the current circumstances, we believe there are a number of valuable lessons that both consumers and resorts can learn to best prepare for this upcoming winter.
Our advice to ski resorts:
Make sure you have a website service that can scale. Applications ought to be resilient enough that performance stays relatively strong even in times of unusually high traffic.
If you plan to distribute tickets through a lottery, don’t use Google Forms data without significantly cleaning it first. You’ll especially want to scan the data for duplicate entries—there’s no way to truly prevent duplicates up front (people can always figure out ways to enter the form multiple times) and since there’s no money down, there’s no financial incentive for people to stop trying.
Plan to make these decisions now. Well-planned strategies take time to execute, and you don’t want to find yourself realizing logistical site issues with limited time to spare. If interested parties can’t reserve slots or buy tickets when you say they can, it may deter them from booking a vacation to your establishment.
Our advice to consumers:
Keep in mind that if resorts open next season, they may be operating at severely limited capacity with the following impacts:
Mountains may need to limit the number of visitors each day. Should this occur, it’s unclear how resorts will handle reservation strategy and booking timeframes.
Crowd flow at each mountain will change significantly. Fewer people will frequent the resort, but lifts may be operated at a significantly lower capacity (e.g. fewer people allowed per chair, slower lift speeds).
Some lifts or areas may stay entirely closed.
Snow quality will likely increase. Less traffic will allow slopes to stay untracked for longer and could result in a larger effective base.
Keep the above impacts in mind when purchasing pre-season pass products. Some passes, such as Epic, now offer insurance that will refund your money in the event of resort closures, personal events, or stay-at-home orders. However, these policies do not appear to cover refunds for limited or altered operations. Using such a pass could become less ideal next season if resort capacity restrictions still exist. Other passes, such as Ikon, offer no-questions-asked pre-season deferrals instead of refunds for closure. Given the current circumstances, these may be a safer bet.
Despite our critiques, we very much want to thank these pilot resorts for opening back up before this crazy season truly ended. These resorts have provided concrete indications for how the skiing experience could look next season, and their bold actions offer valuable lessons for us all.
