For many skiers, the days of strolling up to the hill and buying a lift ticket are winding down, as the industry tries to hedge its bets against crummy snow conditions by locking in sales weeks or even months ahead of time.
Season passes have been around for decades, but the industry has leaned harder on them as a share of revenue following an industry-shaking decision in 2008 by Vail Resorts, Inc. to introduce a cut-rate season pass that gave skiers unlimited access to its resorts. At the time it had five, but it now has 41 mountain resorts, primarily in North America.
Since then, the company has seen its season pass revenue balloon from $78 million US in 2008 to $795 million US in 2022 — causing ski areas alloverNorth America to mimic Vail’s strategy.
The industry says the increased focus on advance passes is a win-win: Customers can get a better deal by buying early, while businesses lock in revenue that carries them through the off-season and times when it doesn’t snow.
This winter has been a perfect example: Very little snow throughout Alberta and British Columbia meant iffy ski conditions during the critical holiday season.
But at Vail, which owns British Columbia’s premier ski resort, Whistler Blackcomb, bad conditions meant 16 per cent fewer skier visits in the early season — although the company’s lift revenue actually grew 2.6 per cent in the same period thanks to the strength of its pass sales. (Vail is one of the rare ski resort companies that is publicly traded, so it discloses more financial information than most of the industry.)
“If they never got a single snowflake in all their mountains, they would still have that pre-sale revenue, so that is absolutely bolstering their ability to not have a bigger decline,” said Chris Woronka, an analyst who monitors the leisure industry at Deutsche Bank in New York.
Nabbing a pass early on can mitigate the cost of what’s commonly known as one of the priciest sports around, although for newbies and casual skiers, the relatively high cost of a walk-up ticket can be another barrier.
Ski and snowboard instructors walk along the base of Whistler Mountain. While the rise of relatively inexpensive passes may be a good thing for dedicated skiers, it’s not necessarily a benefit to more casual ones or those who want to try the sport for the first time. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)
Rise in multi-resort passes
In the words of the Denver-based magazine 5280, Vail’s 2008 Epic Pass “threw a knuckleball” at the ski industry by slashing the price of a ski pass and giving skiers unlimited access to all of the company’s resorts, a move that was seen as crazy at the time but has gone on to change the business.
“They did a very good job of creating a market where skiers and snowboarders that didn’t necessarily live near a resort would still want to buy a season pass,” said Todd Burnette, CEO of the Mountain Collective.
“Customers were basically committing to go to a Vail resort before the season started.”
A sign for the Ikon multi-resort pass, launched by Alterra Mountain Company in 2018, is pictured at the base of the Banff Sunshine Village ski resort. (Paula Duhatschek/CBC)
Rival businesses responded by launching their own multi-resort passes — products that give skiers access to multiple resorts and go on sale well before the season starts.
The Mountain Collective, a group of independent ski resorts, launched its own pass in 2012. It was followed by Alterra Mountain Company’s Ikon Pass in 2018 and the Indy Pass, run by another group of small, independent ski areas, in 2019.
“It absolutely is the direction the business is going,” Burnette said. “We’re all continuing to see growth around passes.”
The growth in multi-resort passes helps reel in international customers who would have otherwise stayed close to home, said Pete Woods, president of SkiBig3, which represents ski resorts in Banff and Lake Louise, Alta.
“It allows people that maybe have a season pass to a local mountain in Colorado, or potentially in California or in Utah, to then be able to come use that for essentially free, to come here,” said Woods, whose resorts participate in the Ikon and the Mountain Collective passes.
Whistler skiers, snowboarders react to poor snow conditions
Unseasonably high winter temperatures have meant little snow at lower elevations at B.C.’s premier ski resort.
Buying ahead has pros and cons
Beyond inspiring direct copycats, the introduction of the Epic Pass spurred other shifts in the industry.
Paul Pinchbeck, president and CEO of the Canadian Ski Council, said ski areas large and small have mimicked Vail’s strategy by dropping the price of their own season passes and raising those prices at a slower pace relative to window tickets.
The share of season passes sold in Canada relative to lift tickets has grown from 40 per cent to 50 per cent in the last two decades, he said.
(Precise data about pricing trends is hard to come by; Statistics Canada doesn’t track the cost of lift tickets, and ski areas are largely private businesses reluctant to share this information.)
Kendra Scurfield, vice-president of brand marketing at Banff Sunshine Village, says she believes it’s important to continue targeting new skiers as part of the resort’s business model. (Paula Duhatschek/CBC)
At Banff Sunshine Village, about 40 per cent of visits to the ski hill in the 1990s involved the purchase of a walk-up lift ticket. Today, that’s down to about 15 per cent, said Kendra Scurfield, vice-president of brand marketing.
The share of window tickets has declined, she said, as a variety of other products — from season passes to multi-resort passes to pre-sale discount tickets — have become more popular.
“The benefit of having the ability to go into [the] market and pre-sell tickets is astronomical,” said Scurfield, who pointed to the cost of lift development and maintenance, payroll and electricity.
For skiers and snowboarders, buying ahead of time has pros and cons. If all goes well and conditions are great, it’s a good way to get a deal, but poor skiing conditions or an unexpected injury can toss those savings out the window.
“You usually get savings,” skier Nathan Page said during a break from skiing in Banff. “The con is you don’t know what’s happening that season, so user beware, man.”
“I’ve had friends who’ve been completely injured, surgery, everything … and they didn’t get reimbursed for their pass at all,” skier Amanda Woodtke said.
Skis and snowboards are pictured in Whistler. For skiers and snowboarders, buying a pass ahead of time has pros and cons. If all goes well and conditions are great, it’s a good way to get a deal, but poor skiing conditions or an unexpected injury can toss those savings out the window. (Paula Duhatschek/CBC)
And while the rise of (relatively) inexpensive passes may be a good thing for dedicated skiers, it’s not necessarily a benefit to more casual ones or those who want to try the sport for the first time.
“They’re going to pay the gate price when they come to the wicket, and it’s quite expensive,” said John Walton, president of the Calgary Ski Club.
Both Scurfield and Pinchbeck said recruiting new skiers into the sport remains a priority and that many ski hills and resorts offer discount packages aimed specifically at first-timers.
Flying to resorts impacts environment
There’s also some concern about the environmental impact of the pre-sale model.
Part of the draw of multi-resort passes, such as the Epic and Mountain Collective’s, is the flexibility. Skiers can, in theory, buy a pass in the summer and then fly wherever the snow is best in the ski season — a strategy the industryencourages.
“We rarely have really poor seasons in California, Colorado, B.C., New England, in Ontario and Quebec,” said Daniel Scott, a professor at the University of Waterloo who studies climate change and tourism.
“Usually it’s one or two of those regions will have a bad year and other parts will have good seasons, and that will all balance off.”
While the multi-resort model makes sense from a business perspective, Scott said, the increased emissions from flying to a destination can also work against a broader goal among skiers and resort owners: to slow climate change and preserve winter weather.
In response to a question about the environmental impact of the multi-resort pass, a spokesperson for Vail pointed to the company’s environmental initiatives, which include reducing landfill waste and using renewable electricity.
The view from the top of Blackcomb Peak near Whistler. (Denis Dossmann/CBC)
Criticism notwithstanding, Woronka, the Deutsche Bank analyst, said he believes resorts will continue to push season passes and other advanced sales in the years ahead.
The next frontier, he said, is to get those pre-committed customers to spend more once they’re on the hill. At Vail, for example, that means getting pass-holders hooked on a new members-only gear service the company is piloting at certain resorts this season.
“I think that’s something others will look at as well,” Woronka said.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
