Vail Resorts Announces Crowd-Oriented Guest Experience Enhancements for 2021-22
Background
In a press release this morning, Vail Resorts announced a series of guest experience enhancements set to take effect for the 2021-22 season. These changes will prioritize passholders and focus on addressing guest wait times.
The company—which owns 34 North American ski resorts—will be limiting lift tickets during the three most popular holiday periods to prioritize passholders. Guests are strongly encouraged to purchase in-advance tickets or passes. Passholder benefits, such as buddy tickets, will not be impacted by this decision. Affected dates include December 25-January 2, January 14-17, and February 18-27.
Vail Resorts is also deploying a new operating plan that will optimize lift loading based on historical data obtained through the EpicMix app. The new plan will include updated lift maze layouts and improved signage, as well as optimizations to loading and unloading that should minimize lift slows and stops. The company also plans to hire dedicated maze coordinators at its busiest lifts to facilitate efficient queueing. Updates to the EpicMix app will provide full-day forecasts for lift line wait times in 15-minute increments at destinations across Colorado, Utah, Vermont, Tahoe, and Canada.
The flow optimizations do not stop at the lifts, however. The company is also implementing process enhancements to rental experiences at East Coast resorts and introducing parking best practices. Additionally, indoor and outdoor seating at food and beverage facilities will be expanded for guests.
In the press release, Vail Resorts also called out its series of already-announced 2021-22 and 2022-23 lift upgrades as a crucial pillar to the guest experience enhancements. These investments span 15 of the company’s resorts across all destination regions.
North American Vail-owned resorts will open for the season between October and December. Specific dates for each resort can be found here.
Our Take
Vail is certainly talking the big talk when it comes to crowd flow improvements across its resorts. Crowd management at some of its resorts, such as Stowe and Breckenridge, has been lacking in recent years, while at some others, such as Keystone and Beaver Creek, it hasn’t been quite as bad. Given the disorganized crowd shuffling we’ve seen in lift queues across some of these resorts, we believe that if implemented as promised, these new policies will actually make a discernible difference. We also give kudos to Vail for investing in their data infrastructure and making data-driven decisions, something that other resorts should take note on.
When it comes to the planned lift upgrades, we agree that they will be crucial to overall mountain experience improvements across the resorts set to receive upgrades. We have detailed the potential impacts from these recently announced projects here.
Those who plan ahead should not see much of an impact from the lift ticket limitations. Vail’s “pass” products include the Epic Day Pass, which is essentially a 1-7 day lift ticket valid at any mountain that’s cheaper than holiday lift tickets at many resorts. The Epic Day Pass is still on sale today. It seems those who are set to see consequences from this decision are those who would have planned to purchase walk-up tickets.
For more on how the Vail Resorts mountains stack up against the competition, check out our rankings of the best ski resorts in the US and Canada. For individual Vail Resorts mountain assessments, check out our reviews of Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Whistler Blackcomb, Crested Butte, Park City, Stevens Pass, Okemo, Stowe, Mount Snow, Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood.
