North American Ski Resorts In Huge 18-19 Lift Pass Sales Battle

Ski resorts across North America are dividing up in to groups participating in one or another different giant lift pass offers for the 2018-19 ski season.

The multi-resort passes have gone on sale in the past few weeks for next winter and several groups are battling to persuade skiers and boarders that theirs’ is the pass to buy.

Each of the passes covers at least a dozen ski areas and most many more.  Some have usage restrictions, others offer unlimited access all season to all areas.

This annual sales battle I not new, Vail Resorts Epic Pass was conceived almost a decade ago now, but its success – with the company now selling more than 750,000 Epic passes  annually in more than 100 countries, has led to increased competition this winter as other resorts try to emulate the model.

The big new player is the Alterra Group, which is just coming up to a year old, after going from non-existence to a conglomerate running a dozen leading US resorts after a multi-billion dollar buying spree.  They’re all on the new Ikon pass.

But as with Vail Resorts, the Ikon pass doesn’t just cover Alterra’s own resorts but other partner areas to from the Aspen Skiing Company, Alta Ski Area, Boyne Resorts, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, POWDR, and Snowbird.

“With the Ikon Pass, we have created an unrivalled platform that offers one-of-a-kind mountain experiences under one pass, by combining our portfolio of 12 destinations with 11 iconic mountain destination partners across North America,” Alterra’s recently appointed CEO Rusty Gregory commented.

Vail’s Epic Pass now offers skiing at 61 ski areas around the world, with new additions for 2018-19, including limited access to Telluride in Colorado, Hakuba Valley in Japan and Resorts of the Canadian Rockies across Canada.

Both passes have a base price of $899 (US) with various variants available.

These multi-resort passes are one way ski lift ticket sales are changing; the other is the growth of ‘dynamic pricing’ like airline tickets and hotel rooms with the ticket price varying according to demand.  Companies like Liftopia drive this option in hundreds of ski areas across North America.

Both concepts are also coming to Europe with multi-resort passes like the Magic Pass now available in Switzerland and dynamic pricing recently launched for Arosa lift passes by Liftopia.