Vail Resorts expects a lift for ski fields in 2021 after skating on thin ice

Vail Resorts, the US operator of Australia’s biggest ski fields at Perisher, Hotham and Falls Creek, is confident of a strong rebound in 2021.

Ski resorts are tipped to boom in 2021. Picture: Visit Victoria

Vail Resorts, the US operator of Australia’s biggest ski fields at Perisher, Hotham and Falls Creek, is confident of a strong rebound in alpine visits in 2021.

This year’s ski season was dented by COVID-19 but hundreds of thousands of ski passes have already been bought for next year.

The US ski giant has taken lessons it learned operating its ski fields in Australia during the pandemic that it will apply to its premier ski resorts in Colorado, Utah, California and Canada.

Vail Resorts chairman and chief executive Rob Katz said his Australian ski fields were hit by stage 4 restrictions in Victoria and social distancing and travel restrictions elsewhere.

“Our results for the first quarter continued to be negatively affected by COVID-19 in Australia,” Mr Katz said.

“Hotham and Falls Creek remained closed for the entire quarter following the issuance of stay-at-home orders by the Victorian government, resulting in a significant decline in revenue.

“At Perisher, visitation trends improved relative to July 2020 as available terrain increased, but results continued to be negatively affected by COVID-19.” During the peak of the pandemic, restrictions delayed the opening of the 2020 snow season to June, robbing the ski industry of three weekends.

But skiers across Australia and North America were already making plans for the next season and had bought up advanced “Epic” ski passes, Mr Katz said, which included bookings for its key ski fields in Australia.

“We are very pleased with the growth in our season pass program, particularly given the ­challenging circumstances. We expect that the total number of guests on all advanced purchase passes this year will exceed 1.4 million, including all passes for our North American and Australian resorts.”

Mr Katz said despite COVID-19 there was still demand for ski visits and holidays in Australia and the company had picked up key insights in its operations through the pandemic — such as credits and refunds, ski schools and food deals — that it could apply to North America.

“We saw in Australia that there was still demand. Even in the middle of the pandemic there was still demand to come to the resorts. There was still demand for passes,” he said.

“We took a lot of insights from all kinds of things from our Australian resort that I think really helped us plan. There are a lot of data points that we took from — whether it was on pass sales, whether it was on who was going to show up, who wasn‘t, whether it was on how to do food service.”