While the best ski racers in the world gather Monday in Beaver Creek for what will be a celebration of snow — the opening ceremonies of World Alpine Ski Championships — industry officials from across the nation are wrapping up their annual meeting in Denver looking at storm clouds on the horizon.
As The Post’s Jason Blevins reported from the SnowSports Industries America gathering, ski resorts are looking carefully at metrics like spending per visit and demographics and wondering about the future of a recreational activity in which younger participants are scared away by the costs while older ones are retiring.
With the average annual incomes of families taking ski vacations now exceeding $100,000, skiing more than ever has become a rich person’s sport, fueled in great part by the resorts’ efforts to milk every possible dollar out of visitors.
Lift tickets at the big resorts now routinely exceed $100 a day, and even the revolutionary $200 season passes that pumped tons of money into Front Range resorts 15 years ago now are selling for $500 — a 150 percent increase that has far outpaced salaries.
It should be no surprise that 14- to 32-year-olds, who now make up 40 percent of all ski visits (down from 45 percent in recent years) are skiing only an average of five days a year. Of the older participants, Generation X visitation is flat and baby boomers are dropping out once they hit 65. Fewer first-timers are returning to the hill.
Consolidations mean there are fewer, bigger resort operators: There were 470 ski areas in the United States last season, down from 735 in 1983. In some cases, that has created virtual monopolies and all but squeezed out the mom-and-pop operators in favor of bottom line-oriented corporate shareholders.
Seeking quick infusions of one-time cash, resorts in the 2000s went overboard with luxury-home development, creating Potemkin villages of gorgeous stone-and-timber mansions at their bases that are occupied only a couple of weeks each year. By forcing the median-waged employees down-valley for affordable housing, the resorts have robbed the ski towns of their locals — the heart and soul of the communities — and even fostered an “us-versus-them” mentality.
Annual reports now focus on mergers and acquistions, diversifications and expansions, “growing” international markets and building out bed bases. That culture so pervades mountain communities now that few businesses ever post “closed” signs on powder days anymore.
But by focusing so intently on the bottom line, many in the ski industry have lost sight of the reason for their existence: fun.
This is not to say that what the industry has done is all wrong. They are businesses, after all, needing to make money to keep those ski lifts turning.
Those housing developments provided the resorts with money that they used to upgrade their mountains with high-speed lifts and efficient snowmaking systems that make the experience reliably good — regardless of weather — for those vacationing families of four spending at least $5,000 for a week in winter paradise.
A growing environmental ethic has led to innovation, increased conservation and a communal consciousness that issues like climate change can have profound effects on resort operations.
The resorts remain vital economic drivers for their communities, the tide on which a whole host of lodging, restaurants, shops and the local civic infrastructure keep afloat — in addition to their own thousands of seasonal and year-round employees.
And the World Alpine Ski Championships are a sunny reminder of the joys of skiing, a showcase for the best of the best just a year removed from the Sochi Olympics. And perhaps the best — and most uncharacteristic — part? You can watch in person for free.
Steve Lipsher (slipsher@comcast.net) of Silverthorne writes a monthly column for The Denver Post.
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