Visiting a ski resort has become a bigger and bigger ask each year. Photo: Vail Resorts
Everyday skiers and snowboarders probably saw the class action lawsuit filed recently against Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Company as something long overdue. The cost of a single day of skiing has skyrocketed in recent years, and some argue the consolidation of resorts across the world under the two massive corporate umbrellas is to blame. According to Reuters, the plaintiffs in the case “allege both companies set high single-day lift ticket prices to steer consumers into purchasing higher-priced multi-mountain season passes.”
Vail Resorts undoubtedly changed the entire industry when it introduced the multi-resort EPIC Pass in 2008 — access to five Colorado resorts plus California’s Heavenly through the purchase of one pass. The strategy allowed the company to purchase more resorts in different locations as time went on, growing its customer base in the process. Ten years later, the EPIC Pass netted the company $525 million in revenue without having to sell a single individual lift ticket, parking pass, or concession. Alterra Mountain Company followed suit with its Ikon Pass, launched in 2018. Together, the companies own or operate 60 ski areas and have contract partners to provide access to another 70 through those multi-mountain passes.
The class action lawsuit, filed by four skiers in March, speaks to the undesirable impact that strategy has had on consumers. Vail responded to those allegations by pointing to its lower-priced pass options and argued the EPIC Pass has actually reduced the price of a season pass by 60 percent.
“For years, skiers have been told that soaring lift-ticket prices, reduced choice, and overcrowding are simply the new reality,” Greg Asciolla, who represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “Our complaint alleges that these outcomes are not the result of healthy competition, but of exclusionary conduct by two companies that dominate access to the most desirable destinations.”
So does the case have any merit? Whitney Traylor, who is a legal expert with Denver’s 9News and has been the Managing Principal of the Traylor Law Group since 2003, offered insight this week into the positions on both sides.
“I think they’re going to have a fairly good defense,” he said about the position of Vail and Alterra. In direct response to the necessity of having consumers commit to multi-resort passes and therefore having access to skiing in different regions, he pointed out, “they’re saying that ‘This is how we account for the bad weather. This is a business decision.'”
Taylor says the plaintiffs are tasked with proving that the two companies have created prices that are higher than they would be in a “competitive market.” His simple summary argues that it’s probably going to be difficult to prove prices would be different in a market that didn’t include today’s industry norm of multi-resort passes. The plaintiffs have “an uphill battle,” in his view.
“It’s really counterintuitive, because if a company gets too good or too big and has more of a market share, which is really kind of the basis of capitalism, then they say you have too much of the market.” You can see his comments on the case below.
