Vail Resorts is reporting double-digit growth in pass sales dollars over last year following the company’s seasonal cessation of its Epic, Epic Local and Epic Day pass products on Sunday.

The sales numbers were released Thursday in coordination with the company’s fiscal 2024 first-quarter earnings call.

Vail Resorts CEO Kirstin Lynch said the total number of pass sales increased 4% and, due to the company’s decision to raise its pre-sale pass prices, total sales revenue increased by 11% for the Broomfield-based company.

While specific numbers weren’t given for 2023-24, the 4% increase likely brings Vail Resorts’ total number of pre-purchased passes to about 2.4 million. Last year Vail Resorts announced it had sold 2.3 million passes. Those 2022 numbers represented a 6% increase over 2021, and an 86% increase over 2019 numbers.

In addition to the price increase, Lynch said the increase in sales dollars was attributable to a new Epic Day pass option the company launched in 2022-23, which allowed skiers to choose from different levels of resort access. For skiers who only want a few days of access to small ski areas like Seven Springs outside of Pittsburgh, Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire, and Afton Alps in Minnesota, a low-price option is now available.

“Last year, we had launched a new product that drove significant acquisition of new pass holders late in the selling cycle last year, which was a version of our Epic Day Pass that was targeted toward more local geographies,” she said.

Lynch said those pass holders returned in high numbers for this season. But as a one-day pass for those smaller ski areas started as low as $44 last season, this year the price increase meant returning pass holders were renewing at a higher price. New pass holders were also purchasing more expensive products this year, Lynch said.

“We also saw that our net migration among returning pass holders improved versus the prior year, and I think, importantly, new pass holders coming into the program came in at higher priced products relative to the prior year,” Lynch said.

But the growth wasn’t just attributed to Epic Day pass products, Lynch said.

“We were able to grow across all major product segments including Epic and Epic Local,” she said.

New markets

Much of the talk at Thursday’s earnings call revolved around Vail Resorts’ creation of a new pass-selling market in Europe.

The company, on Nov. 30, announced it had agreed to acquire its 42nd ski area, Crans-Montana Mountain Resort in Switzerland. Vail Resorts had also purchased a 55-percent ownership stake in the resort operations of Andermatt-Sedrun in Switzerland 16 months earlier, in August 2022.

Lynch said when it comes to the acquisition of more European resorts, she hopes the company’s pace will become even more rapid, although it’s hard to predict what will become available when.

“It’s so driven by the market dynamics and the owners of these assets and where they are and what they’re interested in doing, but we certainly hope to see here that we will continue to make progress on Europe,” Lynch told analyst Patrick Scholes. “We have been focused on Europe as this market is a big opportunity for growth for a long time, so we’re very encouraged to have Andermat-Sedrun and Crans-Montana here over the last couple of years, and the market there is almost three times the size of the number of skier visits as North America, so we hope to continue to make progress with the aspirations to build a network there, but no idea how fast that pace is going to be.”

But that doesn’t mean Vail Resorts isn’t still focused on acquiring more resorts in the U.S. and other places, Lynch said.

“Absolutely we see opportunities in North America and our acquisition focus has been on Europe … we also believe there’s a big opportunity in Japan, and we still believe there are lucrative acquisition opportunities in North America that can really add to our network and connect our network to major markets in between our local ski areas, regional and our destination ski areas, so we continue to stay focused on that as well.”

This story is from VailDaily.com