Vail Resorts goes viral after a strike shuts down slopes and attracts scrutiny
Pizza slice, french fry… repeat. Park City Mountain skiers have been stuck on the bunny slopes after owner Vail Resorts kept two-thirds of the Utah resort’s trails closed, including nearly all its most advanced runs. More than 200 Park City safety patrollers have been on strike for more than a week, causing a staffing crisis at America’s largest ski resort during the busy holiday season. Park City’s ski patrollers’ union aimed to close negotiations with Vail Resorts before the ski season started, but the $7B company rejected workers’ pay-bump proposal, saying its wage hikes have outpaced inflation.
Après-strike: Skiers are going viral by sharing pics of long lift lines and complaining about their ruined New Year’s vacay.
Snowblow up: Some posters blamed striking workers for their bad days on the mountain, while others supported the union and put the onus on Vail Resorts.
Patagonia vests galore… Critics are using the strike to talk about how Vail Resorts’ private-equity past led it to dominate America’s skiing scene. Back when PE firm Apollo Global owned Vail Resorts in the ’90s, the ski staple started gobbling up smaller slopes and grew from owning 4 resorts in 1997 to 42 today. It’s now estimated to be the US’s biggest ski-resort operator. Vail and rival Alterra control more than half of the US’s ski-resort market. Much of their revenue comes from lift tickets that cost ~$300 on peak days and their $1K+ multi-mountain season passes (Vail’s Epic Pass and Alterra’s Ikon Pass).
Strikes can be a slippery slope… because they can draw attention to other parts of a company’s biz. Vail Resorts is in the middle of a social-media storm that’s grown to cover much more than the strike. It’s now a larger conversation about prohibitive costs that critics say exclude casual skiers from the sport.