Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bob Web Sens podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: today is ROBCATS, CEO and chairperson to Build Resorts. Rob,
Speaker 1: how'd you come up with the idea for the epic Pass?
Speaker 2: Well, Bob, it's great to be here. I appreciate you
Speaker 2: having me on the show. And yeah, the team and
Speaker 2: I came up with the idea way back, thinking about
Speaker 2: how do we provide stability to a business that everybody
Speaker 2: thought was totally dependent on whether and uh, it was
Speaker 2: critical for us to do that to make obviously the
Speaker 2: financial situation for our company better, but it was also
Speaker 2: critical for us to do that to provide more stable employment,
Speaker 2: more stable dynamics for our local communities. And so you know,
Speaker 2: it's really been quite transformational.
Speaker 1: So was the main goal to even out revenue or
Speaker 1: to what degree was it to raise the revenue or
Speaker 1: to get more skiers involved.
Speaker 2: The main goal was really to get people to buy
Speaker 2: their skiing before the season began, so that we'd have
Speaker 2: more consistent visitation year in and year out, and that
Speaker 2: people would you know, ski more even you know during
Speaker 2: times when maybe the snow wasn't as good. But then
Speaker 2: we also felt like because we were reducing the price
Speaker 2: so much that it would ultimately, yeah, we'd get more
Speaker 2: people into the sport. And actually, when you look back
Speaker 2: over the last you know, twenty years, we've seen real growth.
Speaker 2: Best you know, two years ever in the US ski
Speaker 2: industry history was two of the last three.
Speaker 1: So do you think that the epic pass alone has
Speaker 1: driven that increase or do you think it's got more
Speaker 1: coming out of COVID or other factors.
Speaker 2: I think there's no doubt that COVID helped in terms
Speaker 2: of I think you know, we were a local option
Speaker 2: for people to take, you know, vacations too, and it
Speaker 2: was outdoors, so that definitely helped. But I think last
Speaker 2: year was maybe a better because last year wasn't a
Speaker 2: COVID related year, and if anything, I think we were
Speaker 2: seeing kind of a decline from the COVID peaks, But
Speaker 2: last year I think highlighted that. Yeah, probably COVID activated
Speaker 2: a bunch of dormant skiers. But when you look even
Speaker 2: you know, look over twenty years, you know, the peak
Speaker 2: year way back when was probably in the high forties.
Speaker 2: Then it was the low fifties, and it was a
Speaker 2: mid fifties, then you know, the high fifties. Now we're
Speaker 2: in the low sixties. So I think you've seen this
Speaker 2: pretty consistent, you know, increase, and I would say it's
Speaker 2: it's probably some corollary effects. So because the Epic Pass
Speaker 2: and then you know the Icon Pass and all the
Speaker 2: other passes that have been created since, because they've stabilized
Speaker 2: the industry, it has made the industry safer to invest.
Speaker 2: And so you've seen a lot more money go into
Speaker 2: ski areas around North America, actually around the world. And
Speaker 2: so it's quite a heyday in terms of the amount
Speaker 2: of new projects, new upgrades that you're seeing, and I
Speaker 2: think that has also brought people into the sport.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a business background, you come up with
Speaker 1: the idea of the Epic Pass. Tell us about the
Speaker 1: actual process of running the numbers. How do you come
Speaker 1: up with the numbers the spreadsheets to say this is
Speaker 1: a good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, for the Epic Pass itself, we knew right
Speaker 2: we were reducing the price of a season pass for
Speaker 2: us from I think it was sixteen hundred or seventeen
Speaker 2: hundred dollars and we reduced it down to six hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: So we knew right away that there were a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of people who were buying season passes from us,
Speaker 2: we were going to lose money on them right at
Speaker 2: the outfit, and so we factored that in and then
Speaker 2: what we were saying was how many additional people could
Speaker 2: sell an Epic pass too, And then a part of
Speaker 2: that was how many people would be new, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of coming into At that point, we only had
Speaker 2: five resorts, so how many would be new people and
Speaker 2: to Veil be for Greek, Breckenridge, key Stone or Heavenly,
Speaker 2: And then how many people would be lifted ad buyers
Speaker 2: that might have skied two days, three days, five days,
Speaker 2: but with the Epic pass right, they'd ski eight days
Speaker 2: or seven days. In other words, we were looking for
Speaker 2: both building frequency from people and then bringing new people in.
Speaker 2: And so we looked at all that and actually in
Speaker 2: the first year of the Epic Past we were it
Speaker 2: was great. We sold a lot of passes, but it
Speaker 2: was nowhere near what we thought it could be. And
Speaker 2: it really taught us that to really convince people to
Speaker 2: use a new product one takes a long time, and
Speaker 2: two marketing was going to be critical to how we
Speaker 2: delivered on that.
Speaker 1: I happened to be in Veil the day was announced.
Speaker 1: I walked down to the gondole and was shocked. But
Speaker 1: tell me about the marketing challenges and how you reach
Speaker 1: the potential ski audience today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think, by the way, I do remember
Speaker 2: that day as well. I was in Veil. I think
Speaker 2: we were doing news hits from the from the basement gondola.
Speaker 2: I think at that time, I can't remember. And then,
Speaker 2: you know, we also had a mad rush of people
Speaker 2: who were going in to buy the past because they
Speaker 2: all thought we had made a mistake and so they
Speaker 2: were convinced that we were going to take it away
Speaker 2: and you know, reverse the whole thing. You know, at
Speaker 2: that time when we launched it, the real challenge was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like most people thought that if you were going to
Speaker 2: buy a season pass, you only did that because you
Speaker 2: were a local. And so most destination skiers, even if
Speaker 2: it made sense for them to buy the past, they
Speaker 2: weren't looking at it because they just didn't think that
Speaker 2: that was for them. And so back then it was
Speaker 2: hard because we didn't have emails for everybody, we didn't
Speaker 2: have everybody's data, we didn't have any of that. So
Speaker 2: we were really focused on a lot of traditional media
Speaker 2: approaches in terms of you know, getting into some display
Speaker 2: ads and online, a bunch of traditional ads that we
Speaker 2: were running still in a lot of the ski magazines
Speaker 2: or newspapers, and then we were doing a lot of
Speaker 2: kind of I don't know, unique stunts of sorts. So
Speaker 2: I had to show how many, you know, we had
Speaker 2: people skiing every mountain, We had people, you know, showing
Speaker 2: how you could use it to you know, ski throughout
Speaker 2: the year and what you could.
Speaker 1: Do with it.
Speaker 2: So, you know, it was it was much tougher. Today
Speaker 2: we're in a totally different spot, right We have emails.
Speaker 2: You know, we have like twenty five million people in
Speaker 2: our database. You know, we have you know, basically almost
Speaker 2: everybody who has skied is somehow in one of our databases,
Speaker 2: unless you know, you kind of have a home and
Speaker 2: asspen and have never stepped foot in one of our
Speaker 2: resorts or something like that. And now, yeah, we had
Speaker 2: a heavy effort to email people. So our goal was
Speaker 2: really to get away from traditional meat media advertising or
Speaker 2: even digital advertising and really focus on how to communicate
Speaker 2: one to one with the guests over email, which served
Speaker 2: us incredibly well and responsible for a huge amount of
Speaker 2: our growth over the past fifteen to twenty years. Over
Speaker 2: the last three to four years, it's really shifted because
Speaker 2: email has become kind of degenerated as a channel. People
Speaker 2: don't open email, especially younger folks twenty to thirty really
Speaker 2: don't open email. And so what we're doing right now
Speaker 2: is we're pivoting towards social channels. We're pivoting towards direct
Speaker 2: engagement through our app and on mobile, and so we're
Speaker 2: really kind of moving that one to one relationship into
Speaker 2: a different spot.
Speaker 1: So where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2: I grew up in Nurshell, New York, about thirty minutes
Speaker 2: north of Manhattan, famous for the I think it was
Speaker 2: the Dick Van Dykes show exactly supposedly took place there.
Speaker 1: Okay, And what did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: My mom was an artist and my dad was a
Speaker 2: local attorney.
Speaker 1: In How many siblings did you have?
Speaker 2: I have one younger sibling, a brother.
Speaker 1: And what is he up to?
Speaker 2: He is in the mortgage finance business. Lives still back east,
Speaker 2: living in West Hampstead of Long Island.
Speaker 1: So what kind of kid were you?
Speaker 2: What kind of kid was I? I was? You know,
Speaker 2: I was very into being active for sure, and you know,
Speaker 2: within my family. I was kind of the first one
Speaker 2: to get the bug to go skiing. It definitely, you know,
Speaker 2: growing up. You know, I think that certainly the history
Speaker 2: of my family, you know, coming over from Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: and then settling and living in the Bronx and in
Speaker 2: Queen's Originally, yeah, like there was no skiing and anybody's background.
Speaker 2: But I did a couple of class trips to Hunter Mountain,
Speaker 2: and even though I was you know, skiing in jeans
Speaker 2: and I was soaking and I'd be on the bus
Speaker 2: right back, it was, yeah, I really got I really
Speaker 2: got into it. And then I was lucky that my cousin,
Speaker 2: first cousin and my uncle, you know, they their family
Speaker 2: really got into skiing and they started skiing around the Northeast,
Speaker 2: and then I would tag along with them, or sometimes
Speaker 2: my whole family would tag along with them, and they
Speaker 2: ultimately bought a house at Stratton, and so I did
Speaker 2: wind up spending kind of from I don't know, fifteen
Speaker 2: to twenty skiing at Stratton. I actually remember at twenty
Speaker 2: I took my first trip out to Vail. I remember
Speaker 2: I was twenty one or twenty two, I can remember,
Speaker 2: and my cousin had to give me like tips on
Speaker 2: how to transition my style from skiing on the ice
Speaker 2: in the east to the powder out west.
Speaker 1: So well, how much were you skiing in those days
Speaker 1: from age fifteen to twenty or even earlier than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably ten to twenty days, maybe a year in ten,
Speaker 2: you know, something in that, depending on you know where
Speaker 2: we took drips ten to fifteen. I mean it's certainly,
Speaker 2: you know, it was still a long drive, and even
Speaker 2: the trip to Hunter was a big, a bit of
Speaker 2: a schlub. So certainly not something I was doing day
Speaker 2: in and day out. But but it was every year,
Speaker 2: you know, it was something I cared about. I was
Speaker 2: an avid. I loved you know, going up to the
Speaker 2: resorts and watching Warren Miller, you know clips on TV
Speaker 2: that I was, you know, would get you jazzed up
Speaker 2: for the next year, going to like the local ski shops,
Speaker 2: uh and you know looking at new gear. Did you
Speaker 2: go to Hickory and Tweed Hickory Tweet? No, I think
Speaker 2: it was it was it was it paragrine or pedigree
Speaker 2: or I can't remember. It's in white planes. It was
Speaker 2: like a really good ski shop there. But I also
Speaker 2: wound up just because I, you know, didn't have to
Speaker 2: grow up with a lot of resources, so a lot
Speaker 2: of my stuff was hand me downe from somebody else.
Speaker 2: Was fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, in school, what kind of kid were you like?
Speaker 1: President of the class or a loaner? Were you involved
Speaker 1: in sports? What were you like?
Speaker 2: I was definitely I was not president of the class,
Speaker 2: but wasn't a loner either. I was more kind of
Speaker 2: in the middle. And actually my personality type is right
Speaker 2: on the edge between introvert and extrovert, so that's the
Speaker 2: kind of would define me a little bit. Was into sports,
Speaker 2: but also, you know, I was into I was, you know,
Speaker 2: much stronger in math and science than I was in English,
Speaker 2: and so wound up, you know, kind of leaning in
Speaker 2: that direction. And then ultimately, you know, when I went
Speaker 2: to college, I went to the engineering school at the
Speaker 2: University of Pennsylvania because that's what I thought I wanted
Speaker 2: to be, only to find out that engineering is really hard,
Speaker 2: so I switched to something So I switched to something
Speaker 2: easier and went into business.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about being on the knife edge, the
Speaker 1: line between introvert and extrovert, and how that manifest itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it manifests itself in that I think
Speaker 2: I have the ability to be extrovert, and so I
Speaker 2: think that has certainly served me well was you know,
Speaker 2: I think the I'm not sure I fully when I
Speaker 2: took the CEO job in Veil at two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: I don't think I fully understood how extroverted I would
Speaker 2: have to be. But that has helped tremendously. But the
Speaker 2: introvert side comes out in yeah that when I'm not
Speaker 2: at my job and I'm not you know kind of
Speaker 2: you know, doing that for work. Yeah, I'm not running
Speaker 2: around to parties. I'm happy to be home, you know,
Speaker 2: with a quiet evening, you know, with friends or family
Speaker 2: or whoever. So definitely, and I can easily spend yeah,
Speaker 2: oodles of time on my own. But I would say
Speaker 2: I get a lot of energy. And it's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons I came back as CEO, you know, I
Speaker 2: left at the end of twenty twenty one and then
Speaker 2: come back came back you know, this past May and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. And one of the things I've loved
Speaker 2: the most is the energy that I get from the
Speaker 2: you know, broader community here at fail Resorts and in
Speaker 2: the industry because it's yeah, so much passion and so energizing,
Speaker 2: So that that's how I can kind of be in
Speaker 2: both worlds.
Speaker 1: So when you are home, you're not working in your alone,
Speaker 1: how do you spend your time?
Speaker 2: Uh? You know, I'm I I have a few things
Speaker 2: that I yeah, I'm super passionate about. One is cycling.
Speaker 2: You know, used to be both road and mountain. Too
Speaker 2: many injuries, so now more mountain and gravel a lot less,
Speaker 2: no more technical mountain biking. I'm kind of too old
Speaker 2: for it. Uh. And yoga has been like become a
Speaker 2: really critical part of my life. Uh. And yeah, staying
Speaker 2: staying in shape certainly, yeah, you know. And then I'd
Speaker 2: say reading, walking, hiking, being outdoors, spending time with my kids. Uh,
Speaker 2: all of that has es central traveling. Uh you know,
Speaker 2: I you know, to me, like my ability to decompress
Speaker 2: is is really important. I don't think I could be
Speaker 2: good at my job if I didn't have like enough
Speaker 2: time to actually unlind And yeah, that to me is
Speaker 2: also just doing what's comfortable in the moment.
Speaker 1: And in this job, does the phone ring, does email
Speaker 1: come in at all hours or is it more regular
Speaker 1: business schedule? You know, during the day, eight to six whatever,
Speaker 1: and occasionally on the weekend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say, one, the phone never rings, so
Speaker 2: I don't. I rarely answer the phone if somebody did call.
Speaker 2: So I do rely on either emails or text as
Speaker 2: a communication channel for me, And I would say most
Speaker 2: of it is, yeah, normal business hours, I don't. I
Speaker 2: personally don't try and generate a lot of emails. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, at night or over the weekends. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, I think maybe I probably did do that,
Speaker 2: you know, I just when I started to CEO is
Speaker 2: thirty nine, I probably was in that mode for a
Speaker 2: little bit. But you kind of quickly learn that if
Speaker 2: you want long term success, like you can't burn yourself
Speaker 2: out or everybody else out around you. So I kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, ease back on that now. That said, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to visit the resorts, I'm going
Speaker 2: to meet people within the industry, I'm going to make connections,
Speaker 2: I'm going to meet investors. So there's a lot of hours.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know when you add it all up
Speaker 2: in terms of what gets dedicated to the company, But
Speaker 2: I don't know. For me, it's you know, I think
Speaker 2: working at Veil resorts allows you to align who you
Speaker 2: are with what you do. And I'm a skier and
Speaker 2: so you know the fact that I get to work
Speaker 2: on that is uh, yeah, I don't view it as
Speaker 2: work and life balance. Is just my life.
Speaker 1: And how many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: I have two kids, and what are they up to? Yeah,
Speaker 2: older son who's twenty seven, who works in New York
Speaker 2: at a startup, and then a younger son who's twenty
Speaker 2: five and is, yeah, working in North Carolina doing ceramics
Speaker 2: and pots ceramics and farming.
Speaker 1: So they're growing up with you. You start to work
Speaker 1: at Bill Resorts. You know, there's many issues here, whether
Speaker 1: you force your kids to ski, whether they come to themselves.
Speaker 1: Were your kids into skiing?
Speaker 2: My kids are into skiing right from the get go,
Speaker 2: so I did not have to force them whatsoever. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's been Yeah, one of the most amazing
Speaker 2: experiences of my life has been watching their progression on
Speaker 2: skis and getting a chance to ski with them, and
Speaker 2: of course the faithful day coming down high line at
Speaker 2: Vale where they were waiting for me instead of the reverse,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was like a very humbling moment
Speaker 2: realizing I was getting older, and I was never going
Speaker 2: to catch them again. That was the end of that.
Speaker 2: And now that's pretty much anytime, like the three of
Speaker 2: us went ski. We've been to Japan twice to ski
Speaker 2: and the last time we did some Helli skiing and
Speaker 2: sharabetsu and it. You know, the three of us went.
Speaker 2: We had an amazing day and they were absolutely like
Speaker 2: they were caretaking me. There was nothing happening in the
Speaker 2: reverse on that front.
Speaker 1: Well, Warren Miller said, there's one day that you and
Speaker 1: your kids ski at the same ability.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're at Penn Engineering isn't a good fit?
Speaker 1: Your mother was an artist. You could have gone into
Speaker 1: a lot of things. Why did you go to Wharton
Speaker 1: in business?
Speaker 2: You know, I felt like, I mean I said this
Speaker 2: at the time, and maybe it was a line to
Speaker 2: get myself into Wharton, But but it's turned out to
Speaker 2: be true, Which is I still love, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of math and science, and I'm definitely an analytic person.
Speaker 2: But I like the social component of Maybe it goes
Speaker 2: back to the introvert extrovert thing. I like the social
Speaker 2: component of business. I like the fact that relationships mattered
Speaker 2: in business, and in a way the arc of my
Speaker 2: business career. You know, I started in private equity. I
Speaker 2: started investment banking, then in private equity, but really made
Speaker 2: this decision that I didn't want to do private equity
Speaker 2: forever because I liked the connection. I like the team,
Speaker 2: I like being part of a group, and so that
Speaker 2: initially was what I liked about business versus engineering.
Speaker 1: Okay, you graduate from Wharton, how do you get a job?
Speaker 1: Is your first job Apollo?
Speaker 2: No, my first job was I went out and looked
Speaker 2: for a variety of different jobs, mostly in banking, and
Speaker 2: I wound up with I think getting like three different offers.
Speaker 2: One was like an options trading, which I didn't want
Speaker 2: to do. The other was working at an investment bank
Speaker 2: called Drexel Burnham of Mike Milkan fame, and then the
Speaker 2: last was at a private equity firm called I think
Speaker 2: it was a CDC. And you know, now it would
Speaker 2: seem obvious that you would go to the private equity firm,
Speaker 2: but at the time, like private equity wasn't really a
Speaker 2: big to do as much as it is today, and
Speaker 2: so it felt like going to an investment bank made
Speaker 2: the most sense. You know, Drexel at that point was
Speaker 2: already under investigation, so there was a bit of a
Speaker 2: cloud over the company. And I remember going out on
Speaker 2: my cell dinner after I got an offer from Drexel
Speaker 2: and the VP was telling I was telling the VP,
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure that I wanted to go to Drexel
Speaker 2: because they were under investigation, and the VP looked at
Speaker 2: me and said, you know, you seem like a smart kid,
Speaker 2: and you know what I'm telling you, don't worry about that.
Speaker 2: You come to Drexel. You're going to have an amazing experience,
Speaker 2: and even if things go wrong, you'll tell everybody for
Speaker 2: the rest of your life that you worked together. And
Speaker 2: it turned out to be totally true. And then, yeah,
Speaker 2: I wound up, you know after Drexel.
Speaker 1: Really, wait, so you went to work for Drexel. How
Speaker 1: long till it blew up?
Speaker 2: Eighteen months?
Speaker 1: And then what, you're just out of college. You make
Speaker 1: this decision. How do you rescue yourself from that?
Speaker 2: It was I thought like my career was over, but
Speaker 2: I wound up Yeah, having an opportunity to Yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot I did. I really worked hard when I was
Speaker 2: a Drexel and I had made a lot of good
Speaker 2: relationships and now all these people went to all different
Speaker 2: firms across Wall Street, and so yeah, I think it
Speaker 2: actually wound up being this huge blessing in disguise for me.
Speaker 2: The people who ultimately started Apollo Leon black Mark Rowan,
Speaker 2: they wound up, you know, they were working on Apollo
Speaker 2: at the time, but they didn't have anything, and so
Speaker 2: they they wanted to know if I want to go
Speaker 2: with them, but they said they couldn't pay me. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I needed money, and so I wound up taking a
Speaker 2: job at Smith Barney in their financial restructuring group for
Speaker 2: about six months, and then in August of nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: they called me again and said, oh, you know we
Speaker 2: are now, we have money and where we can pay
Speaker 2: you if you want to come over and join us.
Speaker 2: And so I wound up making the move in August
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety to join Apollo. When at that point
Speaker 2: there I was the sixth person, you know, in the
Speaker 2: New York office. We're working in offices that we rented
Speaker 2: from somebody else month to month. I had a computer
Speaker 2: that we rented by the month. It was. It was
Speaker 2: a long way from the Apollo of today.
Speaker 1: Okay, what was your relationship with the other five people
Speaker 1: such as they invited you, and what did you think
Speaker 1: was going to work about Apollo?
Speaker 2: My relationship was really with this two guys, one of
Speaker 2: whom was Mark Rowan, who's currently the CEO of Apollo,
Speaker 2: and I'd worked for them while I was at Drexel
Speaker 2: as an analyst, and it was really they. I mean,
Speaker 2: I had some contact with Leon and John Hannon, but
Speaker 2: really it was it was you know, these other guys
Speaker 2: that brought me along. And what I thought for me
Speaker 2: as a young kid was that having money and investing
Speaker 2: money would allow me to have a much I'd get
Speaker 2: more experience, and it allowed me to do a lot
Speaker 2: more than being on the banking side, where you're selling
Speaker 2: to clients, where those clients generally don't want to hear
Speaker 2: from a twenty three year old. But if we're investing
Speaker 2: from Apollo, then that's something that yeah, I thought I
Speaker 2: thought could could help boost my career, which which it did.
Speaker 1: So what did you start out doing it? Apollo?
Speaker 2: We were looking for, you know, traditional buyouts. We certainly
Speaker 2: were looking for like other private equity firms, but a
Speaker 2: lot of what we were doing was looking for or
Speaker 2: companies that were in financial distress, companies that were good
Speaker 2: companies but had taken on too much debt, and then
Speaker 2: we were willing to then go invest in those companies,
Speaker 2: or invest in the debt of those companies, and then
Speaker 2: try and restructure them so we could have an ownership state.
Speaker 2: And that ultimately was how I got connected with Fail
Speaker 2: because Veil at that time, back in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 2: was owned by a company called Gillette Holdings, which was
Speaker 2: like a little personal conglomerate of George Gillett, and the
Speaker 2: company had fail the Mountain Packer Land, a meat packing company,
Speaker 2: and then three television stations, and so we wound up
Speaker 2: making a big investment there and ultimately taking control, and
Speaker 2: then we sold off the meat packer and the television
Speaker 2: stations and wound up with what was then called Veil Associates.
Speaker 1: So whose idea was it? An invest in bail? And
Speaker 1: how did you end up on the board?
Speaker 2: I think you know it was you know, I think
Speaker 2: I had done a lot of the initial work, but
Speaker 2: folks like Leon and Mark, I mean everybody. At that point,
Speaker 2: we were small enough that everybody weighed in on any investment.
Speaker 2: So I think there was a view that that all
Speaker 2: of us had that you know that Veil was a
Speaker 2: unique business. And then at that point it was Veil
Speaker 2: in Beaver Creek that it was a unique business that
Speaker 2: was really not being valued appropriately by people, and so
Speaker 2: we thought we could invest in it. So we closed
Speaker 2: ultimately took control of that company at the end of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, and then in nineteen ninety six we
Speaker 2: were taking the company public as Veil Resorts. And that's
Speaker 2: when I went on the board.
Speaker 1: Okay, you went behind the years. You have any imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2: You know, yes, in a lot of moments, you know,
Speaker 2: especially because I was pretty young, and so you know,
Speaker 2: it was often that people treated me as as young,
Speaker 2: and I think, yeah, I had out of half imposter
Speaker 2: syndrome and half a little bit of a chip on
Speaker 2: my shoulder that you know, that I could carry my
Speaker 2: own even though I was young. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I tried to kind of go back and forth between
Speaker 2: those two.
Speaker 1: Things and what were the issues back then running Bill
Speaker 1: Resorts Bill Associates, Yeah, how we.
Speaker 2: Could turn it into a more consistent business, right it
Speaker 2: was it was about like how do we skiing? At
Speaker 2: that point, people who own ski resorts, for the most part,
Speaker 2: either use them to sell real estate at the base
Speaker 2: of the ski resort or they were just a complete hobby,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of trophy asset like a sports team.
Speaker 2: And so we were trying to do we were trying
Speaker 2: to make the ski business itself the main business and
Speaker 2: not real estate, and we were trying to run it
Speaker 2: more professionally, not like, you know, like just just a toy.
Speaker 1: Okay. Whose idea was it to focus on the mountain
Speaker 1: as opposed to real estate date.
Speaker 2: I think I think actually George Gillette, I think probably
Speaker 2: before we owned it, I think started some of that,
Speaker 2: But then we really felt like, you know, the real
Speaker 2: estate development business was just a very different business and
Speaker 2: and that we could you know that ultimately skiing, just
Speaker 2: like a lot of other parts of travel hotels, resorts, casinos,
Speaker 2: cruise lines, like there's there should be a place in
Speaker 2: that for for a ski resort. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: I think we decided that that's where we were going
Speaker 2: to focus. And one of the big ways that we
Speaker 2: wound up making a kind of decision or investment behind
Speaker 2: that was when we bought Keystone and Breckinridge. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: because once we did that, then obviously we were making
Speaker 2: an even bigger bat on the broader.
Speaker 1: Skis inherently skiing is a seasonal business. You have all
Speaker 1: this money, Why invest in such a challenged business that
Speaker 1: has a imited time span and it's depending on mother nature?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think that is that's long, you know,
Speaker 2: has long been the challenge within the industry is why
Speaker 2: do that? I think I think the seasonal component of
Speaker 2: the business is unique, but it's also not. We're not
Speaker 2: the only business that is seasonal. So lots of parts
Speaker 2: of travel, you know, are seasonal as well. Obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: there's amazing you know travel, you know, businesses and in
Speaker 2: warm weather locations that in the you know are great
Speaker 2: in our winter, but in this our summer, you know,
Speaker 2: don't make any sense. I think one of the benefits,
Speaker 2: at least of ski resorts is that they're pretty amazing
Speaker 2: places to travel in both the winter and the summer,
Speaker 2: even though you don't ski in the summer. So I
Speaker 2: think that gave us some confidence that there was some
Speaker 2: year round support and you could, even if we weren't
Speaker 2: going to make the money in the summer, there were
Speaker 2: jobs for people, so you could have more consistent employment.
Speaker 2: Things like that. I think all the weather, Yeah, that
Speaker 2: was that that was a challenge, and I think we
Speaker 2: initially felt like the way to try and diversify was
Speaker 2: maybe buying more resorts, being in other businesses. So we
Speaker 2: initially spent a bunch of time investing in lodging, investing
Speaker 2: in retail, but no until we really put out the
Speaker 2: Epic Pass, you know, which is a little ways after that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think the business still traded at a pretty reduced
Speaker 2: multiple because of them.
Speaker 1: We're in this picture. Do you meet your wife?
Speaker 3: I met my wife in let's see in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 3: and actually she was with me when we made the
Speaker 3: first investment and when we closed our investment in Veil
Speaker 3: back in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: So, you know, my wife unfortunately passed away earlier this year.
Speaker 1: Oh God, trying to hear that.
Speaker 2: That's okay, But yeah, she's very much always with me
Speaker 2: because she you know, has Yeah, it has been on
Speaker 2: this bail ride with me from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Was ill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, she was.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, So how do you cope with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard. It's not a simple thing, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'm a I'm a big believer in
Speaker 2: yeah that, you know, I don't know focusing on your
Speaker 2: own emotions, focusing on your own mental well being. I
Speaker 2: mean this was all before I went through the last
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of years with her. It's critical
Speaker 2: so and that I think that plus yeah, amazing, you know,
Speaker 2: family with both of my kids and the relationship that
Speaker 2: I have with both of them. Lots of other family,
Speaker 2: lots of friends, colleagues, Yeah, like anyone. That's how you
Speaker 2: get through, you know, the tough times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you go home there's no one there.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's not easy, but you know, you learn
Speaker 2: that life. There's a lot of things that happened in
Speaker 2: your life that you are amazed by and you feel
Speaker 2: like are good fortune. And there are things that happened
Speaker 2: that are tougher. And yeah, I think for me, at
Speaker 2: least I try and you know, understand that that's going
Speaker 2: to be part of the journey, you know, one way
Speaker 2: or the other. But not easy, that's for sure. Not easy.
Speaker 1: Did that have any factor in you coming back to
Speaker 1: the CEO job.
Speaker 2: Not really, I think, uh, you know, I think at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, the you know, the board
Speaker 2: made a decision that they thought it was time to
Speaker 2: make a change, and once they did that, it was
Speaker 2: really about for me. Obviously I was going to be
Speaker 2: supporting the company no matter what, but did I want
Speaker 2: to raise my hand to do this on a more
Speaker 2: extended basis and more permanent basis. And for me it
Speaker 2: was you know, yeah, less about my wife and what
Speaker 2: happened there and much more about my passion for the
Speaker 2: company and the people who work here. Kind of understanding
Speaker 2: that maybe the better part of my entire working life
Speaker 2: has been associated with skiing in one you know, shape
Speaker 2: or another, And yeah, that I wanted to see, you know,
Speaker 2: through this next phase of the sport.
Speaker 1: Okay, what are all the revenue streams of bill resorts?
Speaker 1: To this point, you say you're focusing on the mountain,
Speaker 1: which of course is lift tickets, ski school, food. But
Speaker 1: you hang out and Veil long enough and they say, well,
Speaker 1: Veil owns these retail shops. So what are all the
Speaker 1: revenue streams?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think on the mountain it's obviously lift
Speaker 2: tickets and you know season passes are you know, lift
Speaker 2: access in total right or critical plus? Yeah, then you've
Speaker 2: got ski school and food you know, up on the mountain.
Speaker 2: Then we have rentals, which is a big business and
Speaker 2: a lot that we think we can change there. Uh,
Speaker 2: and then in the base we also have I call
Speaker 2: it like more specialty technical retail stores. That's part of
Speaker 2: our business. We're we're not really in broader you know,
Speaker 2: the further way you get from technical you know, ski
Speaker 2: gear and stuff like that. It's not really where we
Speaker 2: play in our retail business. We do have a collection
Speaker 2: of hotels, We do have a collection of condos that
Speaker 2: we manage, so that makes up our hospitality business. But
Speaker 2: but we are really a ski company and we you know,
Speaker 2: have circled back to that over the years, we've thought
Speaker 2: about the company has tried different ways to expand, We've
Speaker 2: thought about are there different ways for us to expand,
Speaker 2: And in all of those scenarios, we really come back
Speaker 2: to know at our core, the thing we do better
Speaker 2: than anyone else in the world is skiing and stillboarding.
Speaker 1: So what percentage of revenue is driven from the hill,
Speaker 1: lift tickets, food and ski school rentals, not retail, not accommodations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have it off the top of my head,
Speaker 2: but but yeah, the vast majority of our revenue does
Speaker 2: come from the mountain. So I mean it is you know,
Speaker 2: i'd say off mountain off mountain retail and lodging is
Speaker 2: a much smaller percentage, and I think even more even
Speaker 2: smaller when you think about the profitability of those businesses
Speaker 2: versus the profitability of the mountain.
Speaker 1: Okay, where are the growth opportunities in the ski industry?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, for us, I think it's
Speaker 2: on a couple of fronts. I believe actually that there
Speaker 2: we're going to see a sea change in the sport
Speaker 2: over the next five to ten years from what we've
Speaker 2: seen over the last ten to fifteen. So I think
Speaker 2: what's defined the sport over the last you know, ten
Speaker 2: to twenty years has been passes, right, and obviously US
Speaker 2: coming up with the Epic Pass, and then Icon and
Speaker 2: Mountain Collective and the Indie Pass here, and then you've
Speaker 2: got other passes in Europe and elsewhere. That has been
Speaker 2: the defining feature. We've also seen a lot of investment
Speaker 2: go into the resorts, but most of that has gone
Speaker 2: into lists and including for us, we've spent a huge
Speaker 2: amount of money on loot. I think when you look
Speaker 2: to the future, it's going to be different. First, I
Speaker 2: think we've probably reached a little bit of a maturity
Speaker 2: level on passes the last two years, we've seen actual
Speaker 2: declines in past visitation when you look at you know,
Speaker 2: the industry across America.
Speaker 1: But we are we talking about past sales or the
Speaker 1: number of days people use the pass.
Speaker 2: The number I'm talking on this one of the number
Speaker 2: of days people visit on a path. So we've seen
Speaker 2: that actually decline versus increases actually in visitation from lifting.
Speaker 2: It's that's the first time we've seen that in years too.
Speaker 2: You've seen obviously our you know, we had explosive past
Speaker 2: growth over fifteen years, but even in the last four, right,
Speaker 2: our past sales growth has been up fifty percent, But
Speaker 2: over the last two years you've seen it decline, you know,
Speaker 2: two percent to three percent. With Icon, you're seeing their
Speaker 2: pass to you know, kind of stabilize this year as well.
Speaker 2: They're not growing what they were either, and so I
Speaker 2: think you're going to start to see a shift towards
Speaker 2: lift tickets being actually the next focus area for us
Speaker 2: and everyone else, which is how do you sell to
Speaker 2: the remaining people? Seventy five percent of our visits come
Speaker 2: out of pass but that still leaves a big chunk
Speaker 2: of the market out there. How do we now go
Speaker 2: after that? Market, how do we elevate the resort brands
Speaker 2: one by one rather than just the Epic brand. That's
Speaker 2: one piece which we think, actually and I think COVID
Speaker 2: actually showed that there are a lot of people who
Speaker 2: know how to ski. That's not really the huge issue.
Speaker 2: The issue is how do we get them to the
Speaker 2: mountain in more years? How do we get them in
Speaker 2: the years they come to ski more days, how do
Speaker 2: we kind of continue to build that engagement. So that's
Speaker 2: something we're very focused on. And then how do we
Speaker 2: get the skiers who we have to bring their friends
Speaker 2: and families, which is one of the reasons why this
Speaker 2: year we introduced the Epic Friends Ticket, which gives fifty
Speaker 2: percent off to any passholder if they bring somebody to
Speaker 2: the mountain on their lifting it. So that's something that's
Speaker 2: really critical for us. The other piece is we think
Speaker 2: there's an opportunity to completely change how people use gear,
Speaker 2: own gear, rent gear when they're going up on the mountain.
Speaker 2: I think that is a part of everyone needs to
Speaker 2: have gear before you can go up in the mountain, right,
Speaker 2: that is a prerequisite. But you look at that market
Speaker 2: and the way that business is set up and basically
Speaker 2: you have a whole bunch of people who own gear
Speaker 2: who don't use it that often. Even people who ski
Speaker 2: ten days a year and own gear think they need
Speaker 2: to own gear. Well, that gear is just sitting in
Speaker 2: their closet for the other fifty one weeks of the year.
Speaker 2: And obviously then you know, yes, there are a painful
Speaker 2: of people that ski eighty days one hundred days a year. Sure,
Speaker 2: owning gear makes sense. Then you've got all these people
Speaker 2: who are renting gear and their gear rental process is
Speaker 2: just not improved that much of the last fifty years.
Speaker 2: They're not necessarily getting the best gear. It's not easy
Speaker 2: for them. You know, they don't know what ski or
Speaker 2: booth they are going to get. And in our minds
Speaker 2: like that's right for a complete overhaul and something we're
Speaker 2: going to be focused on quite a bit over the
Speaker 2: next five years, that there's really no reason for most
Speaker 2: people to own gear and everyone should be able to say, hey,
Speaker 2: I just want to know that the ski I want
Speaker 2: and the food I want is going to be ready
Speaker 2: for me at the mountain whenever I show up, and
Speaker 2: we feel like, yeah, over the long haul, that's something
Speaker 2: we can deliver on. Ski school is another one where
Speaker 2: we see real growth by digitizing the experience. Another business
Speaker 2: that has not changed, you know, again in twenty thirty years.
Speaker 2: Obviously the course ski lesson is not going to change.
Speaker 2: But we can track people's progress, right the instructor can
Speaker 2: track their progress and provide that either to the guests
Speaker 2: or to their parents. We can provide photos and video,
Speaker 2: we can have video analysis. You know, all the things
Speaker 2: that you're seeing that exist out there, but none of
Speaker 2: that has been brought into the ski industry that you know,
Speaker 2: we think we can do. And the last piece i'd
Speaker 2: say is even on the food side, I think I
Speaker 2: think we lost our a little bit on food during COVID.
Speaker 2: Obviously we couldn't do what we wanted to do during COVID,
Speaker 2: which is fine, but I don't think we fully brought
Speaker 2: back what food service can be to the to our resorts.
Speaker 2: And that's something we're going to be focused on. And
Speaker 2: you see what's going on on food in all kinds
Speaker 2: of entertainment venues, and I think the ski industry has
Speaker 2: an opportunity to kind of follow that trend.
Speaker 1: Okay, breaking it down, you talk about all these people
Speaker 1: who know how to skate, what's the number one friction
Speaker 1: point that's preventing them from being on the hill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what we see is that for the person who
Speaker 2: knows how to ski, it's the ease of the vacation.
Speaker 2: So I think people have a sense that it's still
Speaker 2: a difficult vacation and gear is a big component of
Speaker 2: that difficulty. So you know, if you own gear, then
Speaker 2: you've got to schlep your gear to the resort. If
Speaker 2: you don't own gear, then you've got to worry about
Speaker 2: renting gear, and you don't know what you're going to get.
Speaker 2: You don't know that you're to get the boot you want,
Speaker 2: or even if you own boots, you don't know what
Speaker 2: ski exactly to get what condition it's going to be,
Speaker 2: And there's you're waiting online or you're you know all,
Speaker 2: there's all these little pain points around gear that I
Speaker 2: think are a real challenge. Two. For sure, there's a
Speaker 2: I think a view of Yeah, people want to feel
Speaker 2: comfortable when they're up on the mountain. I do think
Speaker 2: like there's been huge advances in both apparel technical apparel,
Speaker 2: which you know certainly I know when you started skiing,
Speaker 2: when I started skiing, went completely different. Uh, And then
Speaker 2: on the booth. What huge change has happened in boots
Speaker 2: that I think within the industry people kind of understand,
Speaker 2: but outside the industry, I don't think people will realize,
Speaker 2: which is the Boa buckle on boots. So Boa is
Speaker 2: a technology that was you know developed, I know it
Speaker 2: because it's you know, it's used extensively on cycling shoes
Speaker 2: where it's essentially a cable that runs through the shoe
Speaker 2: and then you screw down the cable and then you
Speaker 2: when it's time to release it, you kind of push
Speaker 2: a button. It just releases and you can step out
Speaker 2: of it. But it really creates a kind of custom
Speaker 2: fit to the shoe. Well that was introduced into boots
Speaker 2: I think it was two years ago and has now
Speaker 2: created this sea change. So three years ago, we're the
Speaker 2: you know, one of the biggest specialty ski retailer in
Speaker 2: the world. You know, three years ago we sold no
Speaker 2: boots with the Boa buckle. Today, fifty percent of the
Speaker 2: boots we sell have a Boa buckle because people really
Speaker 2: perceive it to be so much more comfortable and customized.
Speaker 2: That is going to be a big change, and especially
Speaker 2: as we were the first ones to introduce this into
Speaker 2: our rental program. So once we do that, it really
Speaker 2: has an opportunity I think to make people realize that
Speaker 2: between the gear, between the apparel, between how we can
Speaker 2: get the gear to you, Yeah, that we've eliminated a
Speaker 2: lot of those pain points. Even the digitizing of ski school.
Speaker 2: We think right now, when you drop your kid off
Speaker 2: at ski school, you wait in a line, you can't
Speaker 2: find you an instructor. So we're coming up with ways
Speaker 2: again using the same technology other people are doing to
Speaker 2: make that much much quicker. So as a parent, you know,
Speaker 2: yeah that when you're bringing your two or three kids
Speaker 2: to the mountain, all these pain points can go away.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's been well documented that baby boomers, who grew
Speaker 1: up before the business was mature, when it was growing,
Speaker 1: are reaching their sunset years. How do we get new
Speaker 1: skiers into the industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the great things is that
Speaker 2: that's happened, you know, in many respects, because we are
Speaker 2: seeing obviously we couldn't have had record years the last
Speaker 2: couple of years without that, and we are seeing you know,
Speaker 2: kind of what the people call the echo boom, right
Speaker 2: the kids of the baby boomers. And what we're seeing
Speaker 2: is is that we you know, the think we owe
Speaker 2: a lot to two trends. We talked about the season
Speaker 2: past tun which I think has helped, you know, keep engagement.
Speaker 2: But the much bigger trend was really Jake Burton, right,
Speaker 2: and Jake Jake Burton inventing the snowboard when he did,
Speaker 2: and of course everyone hated it, you know, all the
Speaker 2: industry you know, kind of existing folks, and it was
Speaker 2: banned across so many resorts. But of course, you know,
Speaker 2: rather than it being like a problem for the ski industry,
Speaker 2: and saved this games and introduced not just snowboarding, but
Speaker 2: then action sports and the X Games and the Do
Speaker 2: Tour and you know, Red Bull and whatever. Right, all
Speaker 2: of that during the winter, that kind of you know,
Speaker 2: action sports dynamic happens on ski resorts, and I think
Speaker 2: that created this connection. Plus the athletes like Sean White
Speaker 2: and everybody's come after him on that side of the sport.
Speaker 2: Plus including all those action sports in the Olympics, which
Speaker 2: we'll you know, see this year. Those things really provided energy.
Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, I think as you were
Speaker 2: the kid of a baby boomer, you had, you know,
Speaker 2: it was cool to go on the mountain again, and
Speaker 2: the terrain parks. I think, I'm sure you'll remember this pub.
Speaker 2: Like used to be that if like kids tried to
Speaker 2: make a feature, you know, create a job, or create
Speaker 2: you know, a rail or use a log to you know,
Speaker 2: do tricks on the ski resorts would come by and
Speaker 2: mow them all down, and you know, because they thought
Speaker 2: it was a hazard. And now obviously the ski resorts
Speaker 2: are creating these things, and so those kids have a
Speaker 2: sense that they are placed on the mountain, that they
Speaker 2: can go that no parent is going to go through
Speaker 2: right there, and that I think has that separation and
Speaker 2: that identity piece has helped a lot. So I actually
Speaker 2: think we're in a really good spot there. I think
Speaker 2: where we're not at a good spot as a sport
Speaker 2: is that the industry is, yeah, just predominantly white, like
Speaker 2: you know, and and so we have not made inroads
Speaker 2: in yeah, minority communities here, especially the African American and
Speaker 2: the Latino community, and that I think, you know, even yes,
Speaker 2: you know, people bring up, oh there's income, Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a piece of that, but if you're just for income,
Speaker 2: the sport is still wildly underrepresented there. But that's where
Speaker 2: all the growth is coming. Population growth and so I
Speaker 2: do think the sport ultimately has to find ways to
Speaker 2: to be more welcoming and to bring in a broad
Speaker 2: set of communities. I mean that's going to be critical
Speaker 2: as you think about the next ten to twenty years.
Speaker 1: Okay, I was growing up in the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: I said skiing was cool. It was a middle class sport.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, there wasn't the income an equality of today.
Speaker 1: If you say you're a skier today, unless the person
Speaker 1: you're speaking with is also a skier, they're immediately going
Speaker 1: to speak of the cost. They say, oh, you're rich,
Speaker 1: You're going skiing, You're rich, when really skiing has never
Speaker 1: been less expensive, primarily because of these passes. How can
Speaker 1: this narrative be changed? How can people see that it's
Speaker 1: not so expensive, which will then lower the hurdle to
Speaker 1: them participate in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think it's like i'd say, it's two pieces,
Speaker 2: and I agree with you, Bob about that. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, look, the good news is we've seen a
Speaker 2: lot of increase in demand for ski resorts, especially amongst
Speaker 2: high and travelers, and there are no new ski resorts
Speaker 2: being created, So it does create a you know, kind
Speaker 2: of unique supply demand dynamic that has pushed pricing up.
Speaker 2: I think it's what you say is right, and I
Speaker 2: think it's on us to continue to go out there
Speaker 2: promoting the fact that, you know, if you buy a pass,
Speaker 2: you're skiing at prices, whether it's a one day pass
Speaker 2: or full season pass, you're skiing on prices that, yeah,
Speaker 2: are one of the best values in any part of travel,
Speaker 2: for sure, But there are other parts, like certainly taking
Speaker 2: the lesson is expensive, and you know, certainly buying food
Speaker 2: on the mountain is expensive, and we could talk about
Speaker 2: each one, but there are aspects, and you have to
Speaker 2: buy gears. So when you compare going you know, on
Speaker 2: a ski vacation to some of their options, it's a
Speaker 2: little tougher. Now that said, really important to remember, like
Speaker 2: as I brought up, like I started skiing at Hunter Mountain.
Speaker 2: I did not start skiing at Veil. Most people don't
Speaker 2: start their ski you know, journey at Veil or Park City.
Speaker 2: And actually it's still pretty reasonable right to go to
Speaker 2: most of these small resorts either for both for lift tickets,
Speaker 2: lift tickets and rental packages, lift tickets, rental and food packages.
Speaker 2: So it's at all these smaller resorts and local resorts
Speaker 2: that you know, we have to make sure that the
Speaker 2: that yeah, being able to come into the sport remains available.
Speaker 2: And you know, our mantra is, we want to make skiing.
Speaker 2: You know, we came up with the Epic for Everyone
Speaker 2: a while back because we want to make this yeah,
Speaker 2: really open and inclusive opportunity for everybody. Now that said,
Speaker 2: it's expensive, like to run a ski resort, and it's
Speaker 2: expensive to you know, run a mountain restaurant that is
Speaker 2: so costly to build at twelve thousand feet and that
Speaker 2: you only run one meal a day for four months.
Speaker 2: You know, like it's hard to make money in the
Speaker 2: restaurant business doing that. So there are things that are
Speaker 2: not going to be cheap. But but you know, look,
Speaker 2: you can show up on the mountain buying a discounted
Speaker 2: lift ticket or buying a path, put a sandwich in
Speaker 2: your pocket, and you're skiing next to a billion narrative
Speaker 2: fraction of the cost.
Speaker 1: But why are lessons at Veil the major resorts not
Speaker 1: the feeder resorts. Why are they so expensive? I grew
Speaker 1: up when if you took a group lesson, it was
Speaker 1: more about whether you wanted to do it or not.
Speaker 1: Take instruction. Private lessons were always more expensive. But if
Speaker 1: you're a kid going to ski school, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: a young kid, four or six whatever, and you have
Speaker 1: no equipment, it's basically five hundred dollars a day, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty significant cost.
Speaker 2: For a group lesson at veil As five hundred dollars
Speaker 2: a day. That sounds a little bit, but whatever, we're
Speaker 2: a four.
Speaker 1: To six year old in our condo and it's basically
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty foot I didn't believe it myself,
Speaker 1: but once you look at the statistics, you know they
Speaker 1: get equipment whatever. It literally is that expensive.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, with rentals, yeah it could be, and with
Speaker 2: skiing it could be. I guess what i'd say is
Speaker 2: it is there's a part of this that is the
Speaker 2: supplied demand piece. So we actually, i'd say there's some
Speaker 2: pretty compelling opportunities to get when you combine lift access
Speaker 2: and lessons together, and you can get rentals as part
Speaker 2: of all of that. And I think, you know, we'd
Speaker 2: have to look at the time off year you're going,
Speaker 2: but I know that there are some pretty compelling opportunities
Speaker 2: at most of our resorts. But there is a piece
Speaker 2: that yeah, like we have a there is a certain
Speaker 2: limit on capacity in terms of how many kids we
Speaker 2: can actually bring in, and so there's the yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a cost piece to it. And it's also you know,
Speaker 2: as we I like to remind people, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that you know, we've done a lot with passes to
Speaker 2: make the sport more stable, the truth is is that, yeah,
Speaker 2: our business still goes up and down based on the weather,
Speaker 2: which is a little trickier. But if you look at
Speaker 2: every part of the travel business, and I'm sure you know,
Speaker 2: and you're traveling at peak times, it's expensive. But that
Speaker 2: is just the reality of how how you know, I
Speaker 2: think life has gone during that. But and by the way,
Speaker 2: even if you went to Keystone, it would be a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot less expensive than going to Veil.
Speaker 2: I mean a Veil and Beaver Creek. You're at, you know,
Speaker 2: two of the best resorts on the planet, and everything
Speaker 2: is going to be a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Those of us who've been around, no, certainly at Deer
Speaker 1: Valley and Sun Valley and Snowbasin who have the same
Speaker 1: owner of the holding family, the food is spectacular. How
Speaker 1: come that could never be replicated A.
Speaker 2: Veil well, I would I would tend to say that
Speaker 2: there are places within Veil that I think the food
Speaker 2: is really amazing. You know, certainly if you're going to
Speaker 2: two out obviously if you're going to be sitting down
Speaker 2: at the time. Figuring to wild Wood, I think no
Speaker 2: doubt that Eagle's Nest and Midvale, I think there are
Speaker 2: opportunities for us to you know, definitely improve there. But
Speaker 2: over to Beaver Creek, I think you'd see very similar food,
Speaker 2: absolutely as good food as Sun Valley or Snowbasin or
Speaker 2: Deer Valley. I think those resorts it's important to remember
Speaker 2: right Vale Park City, Whistler, Breckinridge, these resorts are much
Speaker 2: much larger. They do many many more people, and one
Speaker 2: of the prioritiestr USS is to make sure that we're
Speaker 2: moving as many people as we count through the restaurants,
Speaker 2: and the people have a way to sit, and it
Speaker 2: is a little bit harder to get the high touch service.
Speaker 2: But if you go to a North Star, if you
Speaker 2: go to a Beaver Creek, yeah you're gonna get that
Speaker 2: same experience that you get at some of these other resorts.
Speaker 2: But yeah, if you want to if you want more
Speaker 2: big Mountain scheme, right, which is a little different, and
Speaker 2: you want that kind of larger experience, then no, you're
Speaker 2: gonna get. But I would put yeah, the overall experience
Speaker 2: a bail up against any resort in the world when
Speaker 2: you include everything the terrain, the food, the lyft network,
Speaker 2: the quality of the lift, the quality of the snow.
Speaker 2: That to us is like you have to look at
Speaker 2: it in total.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about lifts. You referenced for a long
Speaker 1: time Veil was announcing after the ski Seeson began new
Speaker 1: lifts here and there. That has tapered off. Is that
Speaker 1: a result of the lowering of the stock price. What
Speaker 1: will we be thinking, you know, both in terms of
Speaker 1: expansion and replacement going forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, not at all. We have not. We have
Speaker 2: not gotten ease back on that at all. I think
Speaker 2: in twenty one twenty two, we announced what we called
Speaker 2: the Epic Lift Upgrade, where we literally I think upgrade.
Speaker 2: I think it was I have to remember the exact numbers,
Speaker 2: like twenty lefs across the network. We spent like three
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million dollars per year or something. A
Speaker 2: huge investment. I mean, I would say, I think when
Speaker 2: you look at fail even at fail right. Over the
Speaker 2: last four to five years, you've seen a lot of
Speaker 2: new lifts go in so much that when you think
Speaker 2: about Vail As Mountain, there are very few lifts that
Speaker 2: are left to upgrade, right, And you think about the
Speaker 2: new lift that went into the back Balls you know
Speaker 2: now called seventeen. You think about the upgraded chair and
Speaker 2: Game Creek, you think about obviously the upgraded Northwoods upgraded
Speaker 2: Chair four. Obviously going back further, the Gondol upgraded seventeen.
Speaker 2: So now the question is like where on Veil. You know,
Speaker 2: there's there's almost no fixed grip lifts anymore. Everything's high speed.
Speaker 2: We've upgraded a lot of the highest traffic lifts from
Speaker 2: four to six person. So now the question is, well,
Speaker 2: where do you focus on the experience and where can
Speaker 2: you make a difference. You know that to us is
Speaker 2: it's we're not backing off at all. And obviously, you
Speaker 2: know you look at the number of lists we put
Speaker 2: in across our what we'll call our big destination resorts, Keystone, Breckenridge,
Speaker 2: Beaver Creek, Vale, Park City, and Whistler. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: that those you could put those mountains up against any
Speaker 2: mountain in the world in terms of the quality of
Speaker 2: their lift network and the investment that's been put in,
Speaker 2: and there are unrival But but yeah, like at some
Speaker 2: point it's what I said earlier, Like I think that
Speaker 2: where we have to invest as a company is not
Speaker 2: necessarily just in lifts. We have to use technology in
Speaker 2: a completely different way. I think skiing is a sport
Speaker 2: that it lends itself to using technology again to remove
Speaker 2: the pain points, you know, making sure, making it easy
Speaker 2: to do all the things that you're doing on the mountain,
Speaker 2: to buy your ticket, buy your path, to buy ski school,
Speaker 2: to reserve something, to see what food is available, to
Speaker 2: rent skis, all of these things are things that you know.
Speaker 2: You should never be waiting on a line. You should
Speaker 2: never be waiting on a line for lift tickets. You
Speaker 2: should be able to navigate the entire mountain understanding all
Speaker 2: of you know, where there's lift lines or not. That
Speaker 2: technology piece, I think we've made great strides in this
Speaker 2: beginning those works and efforts, but we're nowhere near like
Speaker 2: best in class, and that to me is as important
Speaker 2: as that either. But the lift piece, I think it veiled.
Speaker 2: Maybe you have an idea of a lifted veilue you
Speaker 2: want to replace, But.
Speaker 1: No, when I come to Veil, I'm listen what people
Speaker 1: don't realize about Veil other than a couple of beginner lists.
Speaker 1: Every single lift is a high speed lift and has
Speaker 1: been for a while now. Some other resorts are starting
Speaker 1: to catch up. But as I say, when you talk
Speaker 1: about the lift network at Veil, it's beyond belief, which
Speaker 1: brings me to another issue, which is perception. Okay, they
Speaker 1: show pictures go viral online of the lines at the
Speaker 1: gondola on a powder day. Little do people know people
Speaker 1: are lining up at six thirty in the morning, the
Speaker 1: lift isn't even open. Then there are pictures in the
Speaker 1: back bowls chair five before chair seventeen was installed on
Speaker 1: a powder day people go to ski sun up sundown
Speaker 1: bowls and it created a line. Not only is there
Speaker 1: a new lift for someone like me, that's the last
Speaker 1: place I'm going to go on a powder day because
Speaker 1: I know more people are going to go there. So
Speaker 1: this perception a Veil as being an overcrowded, not consumer
Speaker 1: oriented company. The whipping boy. Is it something that you
Speaker 1: shrug your shoulders and say there's nothing I can do
Speaker 1: about it, or can you turn it around? I mean,
Speaker 1: just at Veil, the chair five at second iteration was
Speaker 1: a triple for decades. You wanted to upgrade it too
Speaker 1: high speed. All the locals went berserk. Oh the ski
Speaker 1: of the powder is going to be skied out. Whatever
Speaker 1: turn it into high speed. No one ever said another word.
Speaker 1: So the locals don't like change. Is this something that
Speaker 1: you just have to shrug your shoulders or is there
Speaker 1: any way to turn this around?
Speaker 2: I think yeah. So obviously I've been around the industry
Speaker 2: and Veil resorts a long time, and so for me one,
Speaker 2: what you're saying about Veil and about crowding is exactly right,
Speaker 2: which is I think I tell people all the time
Speaker 2: that we're not We're not trying to avoid, right, some crowds.
Speaker 2: Sometimes that's the reality of having a popular place that
Speaker 2: people want to go to and what it's like on
Speaker 2: a peak moment. You know, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I've traveled a lot. I know you do tubea like
Speaker 2: anywhere I go between christmin years, Christmas and years is crowded,
Speaker 2: and so you know, or by the way you go
Speaker 2: to a try and get into like a playoff game
Speaker 2: in any sport, it's crowded. Go to the super Bowl,
Speaker 2: it's crowded. Try and get across Manhattan at rush hour,
Speaker 2: it's crowded. Like I think, in the end, our job
Speaker 2: is to constantly be making improvements and ensure that while
Speaker 2: it may make for good social media content for a moment,
Speaker 2: in the end of the day, the guests who were
Speaker 2: there that day, they understand that the totality of the
Speaker 2: experiences such that they like it now. By the way,
Speaker 2: of course, like there are people who say our resorts
Speaker 2: are too expensive and too crowded, Well, that doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense. There are people who say that our resorts
Speaker 2: are so crowded we've ruined the sport and no one
Speaker 2: goes anymore. That doesn't make any sense either. Obviously, if
Speaker 2: we're too crowded, it's because people are coming. Ninety seven
Speaker 2: percent of our lift lines are less than ten minutes.
Speaker 2: As that I am sure you remember skiing back in
Speaker 2: the day. Yes, you waited way longer on a lift
Speaker 2: line than you ever do today because the lists were
Speaker 2: so slow. In terms of the perception thing, I think
Speaker 2: there's a component of our company that by our very existence,
Speaker 2: you know, brings on a lot of this negativity and
Speaker 2: that part of it I do shrug my shoulders down,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that there's really much I can
Speaker 2: do about the fact that people take pleasure in showing
Speaker 2: those photos or trying to make fun of Veil at
Speaker 2: different times. But there's also things that we do that
Speaker 2: you know, I think don't go well and where we
Speaker 2: own it and we have responsibility, and I think our
Speaker 2: company can do a much better job of avoiding those
Speaker 2: moments when those moments happen, rectifying them quickly, and most importantly,
Speaker 2: communicating better with people. And I think one of the
Speaker 2: things when I look back, you know, especially of this
Speaker 2: last year, is that, you know, I think our company
Speaker 2: has to do a better job of both owning the
Speaker 2: issues through and through, you know, and not making any
Speaker 2: excuses or bones about it, but then also standing up
Speaker 2: for ourselves about all the great things that we do
Speaker 2: and stand for and represent the amazing people who work
Speaker 2: here and on that I'm not going to be I
Speaker 2: will not take a defensive stance at all. I'm going
Speaker 2: to lean into that. And that's the message that I've
Speaker 2: been sending as I've been going around our resorts and
Speaker 2: our communities, is that you know, we like, you know,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, I have a lot
Speaker 2: of respect for you know, four Seasons, and you know
Speaker 2: and Marriott and Riz Carlton and Mandarin Oriental sixth Sense
Speaker 2: and all the rest of six Senses, all the rest
Speaker 2: of them. They do an amazing job with Geest Service.
Speaker 2: But of course they're talking about two or three hundred
Speaker 2: rooms at most. They're running an experience that's indoors on
Speaker 2: the ground, you know, climate controlled environment, like we are
Speaker 2: trying to run an experience for in some cases twenty
Speaker 2: to thirty thousand sometimes at Whistler people at ten to
Speaker 2: twelve thousand feet in a storm. Yeah, we are not
Speaker 2: going to hit the mark every day all the time.
Speaker 2: The thing we have to do better, though, is we've
Speaker 2: got to own when we don't hit the mark, rectify
Speaker 2: it and then yeah, you know, like keep leaning forward.
Speaker 1: So how come al Tarra You never hear anything negative
Speaker 1: about al Terra and the Icon past, never, And it's
Speaker 1: even more extensive.
Speaker 2: I think they First of all, I think there was
Speaker 2: a lot of negativity about Icon and crowding in the
Speaker 2: first year or two that they that they came out,
Speaker 2: and a lot of chatter about that and a lot
Speaker 2: of chatter about how ski passes were rooting the industry,
Speaker 2: both epic and icon but you know, I think, obviously one,
Speaker 2: we're PubL company and so we are much more transparent.
Speaker 2: Everything that happens with us is out there for everybody
Speaker 2: to see, and we report regularly. And we are the leader.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, like that's just the way it goes.
Speaker 2: We are the big fish in this pond. We are
Speaker 2: the leader. We're both the leader in terms of innovation.
Speaker 2: We're the leader in terms of how we set prices
Speaker 2: and products around the industry. And I understand that that's
Speaker 2: gonna We're going to take arrows with that. I'm okay
Speaker 2: with that, but yeah, but it doesn't you know, just
Speaker 2: because I can shrug my shoulders a little bit at
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that we don't have a responsibility to
Speaker 2: constantly improve and do better.
Speaker 1: What did you learn from Park City? Granted you were
Speaker 1: not the CEO at the time, What did you learn
Speaker 1: from Park City ski patrols strike during the Christmas holiday
Speaker 1: which limited the amount of open terrain on the mountain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was, yeah, very difficult experiences for guests,
Speaker 2: and therefore, right are really something that we never want
Speaker 2: to see happen again. I'd say, you know, lessons for
Speaker 2: us are one. You know, we've you know, we've had
Speaker 2: a number of unions before Canyons. You know that Ski
Speaker 2: Patrol really started from when we bought the Canyons, and
Speaker 2: they had a Ski Patrol union before we bought them.
Speaker 2: But we've negotiated many contracts right with them with other
Speaker 2: unions that we either inherited or came you know, or
Speaker 2: showed up recently, including three different union contracts after the
Speaker 2: parts of the struct So I think we have a
Speaker 2: long history of being able to figure out a way
Speaker 2: to resolve these things before they ever get to them.
Speaker 2: So that's one piece. We certainly a lesson that we
Speaker 2: need to make sure we've exhausted every possibility before we
Speaker 2: get to a strike. I think another piece though, is, yeah,
Speaker 2: we need to be more prepared in a strike, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, I think there are a lot of lessons
Speaker 2: we took for things that we could do differently if
Speaker 2: there was a strike again. And we hope there's never
Speaker 2: a stroke, but if there was, because of course, like
Speaker 2: we are going to operate through a strike, and I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of things that I feel much
Speaker 2: more confident about that we would be able to do
Speaker 2: today that we couldn't do that or didn't do that.
Speaker 2: The last thing is, I think, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the things that was a challenge for us during that
Speaker 2: strike was also our own employees had a hard time
Speaker 2: providing the experience that they wanted to provide during the
Speaker 2: strike because they were under attack right from the union,
Speaker 2: from other people in the community. And I think, you know, certainly,
Speaker 2: in a moment like that again, I personally would you know,
Speaker 2: be on the ground and the whole company would put
Speaker 2: their full support behind anyone and everyone who's trying to
Speaker 2: keep the resort operating in ways that I don't think
Speaker 2: we did the fullest, you know, last go round. So
Speaker 2: I think there's some some quick learnings, But of course
Speaker 2: the biggest one is we don't want to We want
Speaker 2: our employees on the mountain, and we want our patrol
Speaker 2: or any other group on the mountain to be to
Speaker 2: be there providing the best work at the cap.
Speaker 1: What about the insanity of the lift situation in Park
Speaker 1: City and all the negative you ordered, We're going to
Speaker 1: install a lift, they stopped at the latest legal cases,
Speaker 1: you can't do it. You as a company pivoted brilliantly
Speaker 1: and said, well, we'll move that lift to Whistler. But
Speaker 1: if this is anybody looking at this situation, why would
Speaker 1: you not want another lift? First of all, park City
Speaker 1: is a megalopolis. If you talk about parking, most people
Speaker 1: don't park anyway. And then you have the guy with
Speaker 1: the town lift now saying he wants to buy I mean,
Speaker 1: he gets all this press even though it's a non starter.
Speaker 1: Is this something that is unsolvable? You know, it bleeds
Speaker 1: into the other issue of you mentioned earlier. They're not
Speaker 1: building any more new ski areas. There are economics involved,
Speaker 1: but the conservationists are insane. They stop mineral King of
Speaker 1: Disney in the sixties, Grand tar our Gee can't even
Speaker 1: Expand what can you do when there's this huge disconnect
Speaker 1: between a small segment of the public that doesn't even
Speaker 1: seem rational.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I think it's I would say it's
Speaker 2: that was a difficult dynamic and one that you know,
Speaker 2: we certainly feel that the community made the wrong decision
Speaker 2: about that, and we announced shortly after I came back
Speaker 2: that we're going to absolutely get in front of the
Speaker 2: community again, and the council to put those back in.
Speaker 2: There'll be you know, new lefts that we're going to buy.
Speaker 2: But because we do want to see those lists go in.
Speaker 2: We also have a base, you know, a development at
Speaker 2: the base area of that mountain that we think is critical,
Speaker 2: especially now with the Olympics coming. We think we need
Speaker 2: to that's an eyesore, you know, the area at the bottom,
Speaker 2: and we should be upgrading it. And honestly, for our company,
Speaker 2: we don't really make money doing any real estate development.
Speaker 2: We really bring in other people to do it. We're
Speaker 2: just trying to get done, don't you know. We're happy
Speaker 2: to add parking, We're happy to add whatever you know
Speaker 2: to make things better. It works for us too, but
Speaker 2: it just has to be something that's doable. Somebody has
Speaker 2: to financially be able to make sense of it. And
Speaker 2: so I think I think there's maybe some shifting going
Speaker 2: on within the community and understanding that even if they
Speaker 2: need to be really sensitive to growth, that yeah, like
Speaker 2: turning down improvements and upgrades is not something that long
Speaker 2: term is going to be good for them, you know.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, they're in every single community there there
Speaker 2: are contingents of people that are just anti growth no
Speaker 2: matter what and I think, you know, we have a
Speaker 2: pretty good track record, by the way, including within Park City,
Speaker 2: of doing upgrades, putting in improvements, and I think it's
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes we get their setbacks to that, and
Speaker 2: I think that was certainly a moment of a setback
Speaker 2: with the Park City left. But we just have to
Speaker 2: stay at it, you know, I mean, and it is
Speaker 2: on us to figure out a way through the communities
Speaker 2: to ensure that we can find some way to align
Speaker 2: with them to keep making upgrades. And I think the
Speaker 2: good news is again I think I could really say
Speaker 2: with every single one of our major resorts, Yeah, we've
Speaker 2: got a pretty good long term track record of getting
Speaker 2: things done, even if there are momentary settlements.
Speaker 1: Okay, al Terra started. It is not a completely comparable
Speaker 1: company in that a lot of the skieries are not
Speaker 1: actually owned by Alterra, but they made a big point
Speaker 1: that they were going to leave management of the ski
Speaker 1: areas local and maintain their character. Now, on some level,
Speaker 1: I'm rolling my eyes by virtue of the fact a
Speaker 1: lot of these skieries still have old slow lifts, etc.
Speaker 1: You came in, you moved the operation to the front
Speaker 1: range from the Vale Valley and concentrated management. Now, just
Speaker 1: putting a little additional point in this. I know people
Speaker 1: in Vale who own retail businesses, restaurants, and they're not
Speaker 1: happy with the fact that there is no individual advertising
Speaker 1: unveil to their perception that most of the advertising is
Speaker 1: for the overall company, the Epic Pass. So a couple
Speaker 1: of things here to what degree is local management important?
Speaker 1: And secondly you talked about this change, is there going
Speaker 1: to be more emphasis and what might that look like
Speaker 1: on the individual resort as opposed to the overall paths?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so both one, I would say we have local
Speaker 2: management and everything. Of course at every single one of
Speaker 2: our resorts. We have an incredible track record of promoting
Speaker 2: the local management of our resort from within, and we
Speaker 2: move people around between resorts so that the people who
Speaker 2: are running our resorts are from the ski industry, of
Speaker 2: the ski industry, grew up in the ski industry. And yeah,
Speaker 2: we have huge pride in that. It is true that
Speaker 2: I absolutely believe that if we want to run a
Speaker 2: successful company, that we have to have certain things that
Speaker 2: we do together as a team. Just like every other
Speaker 2: company that does leisure or whatever, they don't have every
Speaker 2: single resort or property running off on their own. But
Speaker 2: that said, yes, you know, people have told me that
Speaker 2: we've homogenized the resorts, and I think you and I
Speaker 2: both know that that's ridiculous and that if you go
Speaker 2: to Vail, it doesn't feel anything like what it's like
Speaker 2: in Keystone, or if you go to Heavenly or if
Speaker 2: you go to Beaver Creek or Recordage, and those are
Speaker 2: the five resorts we had back in two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: and then they're nothing like. Right, no part of the
Speaker 2: experience is alike. But I think that if you want,
Speaker 2: I mean, at the end of the day for us,
Speaker 2: you know, and this was true for the icon piece too,
Speaker 2: But think about it from our perspective, we moved right.
Speaker 2: We went from ten or twenty percent of our business
Speaker 2: on a pass to seventy five percent of our business pass.
Speaker 2: I think that has saved our company and providing stability.
Speaker 2: It has saved the industry. And to do that, we
Speaker 2: needed to get all of our resorts at least aligned
Speaker 2: on how we actually drive revenue. But to the point
Speaker 2: I made earlier and you just mentioned, yes, we to
Speaker 2: make that kind of a sea change, fundamental move in
Speaker 2: the industry, we had to put all of our resources
Speaker 2: behind the epic brand, behind the past product. We had
Speaker 2: to make Lift tick. It's absolutely expensive because we wanted
Speaker 2: people to move from Lift tickets to the past. All
Speaker 2: of those were essential pieces. But now, no, I think
Speaker 2: we understand that we need to do a better job
Speaker 2: promoting each individual brand. You will absolutely see that. You
Speaker 2: will absolutely see that for Vail, we need to activate
Speaker 2: through events, social media, video content at every resort so
Speaker 2: that people understand the excitement of each one of those brands.
Speaker 2: And I think absolutely I think we can be criticized
Speaker 2: for not having done enough of that, and I think
Speaker 2: you're going to start to see that change, you know.
Speaker 2: Now that said, I think, you know, for a lot
Speaker 2: of these communities, I think one of the things they
Speaker 2: have to think about is is it that they want
Speaker 2: more people coming or not. Like we get criticized on
Speaker 2: both sides of that with some people. You know, like
Speaker 2: we wanted to put you know, affordable employee housing in
Speaker 2: a fail a lot of people didn't want that. You know,
Speaker 2: We've got a project that we've you know, we want
Speaker 2: to put in a West Lionest and now we're finally
Speaker 2: making progress in that. But for a while, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people that didn't want to see that,
Speaker 2: So it's attention, you know, and then you get people saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: well you're not driving enough business. So some of this,
Speaker 2: I would say, is we just have to realize as
Speaker 2: part for the course, like you're going to get some
Speaker 2: of this feedback, it's going to sometimes seem contradictory, and
Speaker 2: it's our job and my job to navigate through all
Speaker 2: of that. One of the things I said when I
Speaker 2: came back was that it's my job to find ways
Speaker 2: to align all of our stakeholders right, our our shareholders,
Speaker 2: our employees, our community members, and our guests. Like that's
Speaker 2: my job, Like how do I navigate through all of
Speaker 2: that and thread that needle? And it is a you know,
Speaker 2: you're not always going to get it right, but I
Speaker 2: think we have to constantly be thinking about how we
Speaker 2: do that because I think that's how we have had
Speaker 2: long term success.
Speaker 1: Just going back to one of your points about people
Speaker 1: saying the resources are the same, they couldn't be more different.
Speaker 1: The only thing that's similar are the bones of the websites,
Speaker 1: which any corporation would say, hey, yeah, that's a way
Speaker 1: to do it. Where are you know? It is a
Speaker 1: public company. Where are the growth opportunities for Veiled Resources?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we can absolutely grow visits. So I
Speaker 2: feel I think that we have not done and especially
Speaker 2: compared to where we've been the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: I think there's a real opportunity for us to grow visits.
Speaker 2: That's not going to be ten and twenty percent growth,
Speaker 2: that's not the way the industry works. But getting back
Speaker 2: to low single digit growth I think is definitely possible.
Speaker 2: I think then getting price growth right above inflation also
Speaker 2: very doable. And then really the big opportunities and the
Speaker 2: big swing points for us are going to be around
Speaker 2: you know, what we call kind of antilly revenue, but
Speaker 2: is you know, ski school, rentals, and food. And I
Speaker 2: think we have big opportunities in all three, particularly ski
Speaker 2: school and rentals to really drive outsize growth. And we
Speaker 2: haven't seen, you know, in the industry, we haven't seen
Speaker 2: on our company and haven't seen in the industry before.
Speaker 2: And then finally, I do think there are opportunities for
Speaker 2: us to grow in Europe and for us to grow
Speaker 2: in in Asia. Not something that's going to happen overnight,
Speaker 2: but this is a global industry and a lot of
Speaker 2: the change that we've seen that has been so successful
Speaker 2: in North America, I think is still is making its
Speaker 2: way around the world, but it's still kind of slow
Speaker 2: to get there.
Speaker 1: Well, in terms of acquisition, even in Europe, there was
Speaker 1: a local community that bought a ski area, so wouldn't
Speaker 1: be purchased by one of the huge companies. What are
Speaker 1: the opportunities and what are the strategies without revealing any
Speaker 1: special sauce, yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: It's patient and the special sauce is patience. You know.
Speaker 2: I think people tend to look at what we did
Speaker 2: in North America in Australia and say, well, oh, it's
Speaker 2: so obvious that you could do all of that. But
Speaker 2: you know, as you probably remember, certainly back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and five, in two thousand and four, yeah, nobody
Speaker 2: thought there was any opportunity to acquire resorts in North America,
Speaker 2: or even if you did, why would make any sense?
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm not you know, I know that it
Speaker 2: takes time. I think in a way, right, I think
Speaker 2: you're going to have some resorts in Europe there that
Speaker 2: may make the same decision that the community and locks made,
Speaker 2: and I think that's fine. But there's going to be
Speaker 2: other resorts and other owners, right that meg see that.
Speaker 2: Hey wait a minute, as we think about the next
Speaker 2: five to ten years, maybe it makes sense to align,
Speaker 2: you know, more strongly with one of these bigger players.
Speaker 2: And you know, so when I look out five or
Speaker 2: ten years, I'm quite confident we'll see some of those
Speaker 2: opportunities come through.
Speaker 1: What would be the benefit to one of those large
Speaker 1: resource and there are many Rubia balveasir goes on to
Speaker 1: joining part of an overall company, Well.
Speaker 2: I think you know a couple. But one is, you know,
Speaker 2: the ski industry, and I think even more so in Europe,
Speaker 2: right really has struggles with weather. Right, they are at
Speaker 2: lower elevation than we are, and so you know, I
Speaker 2: think as you think out over over time, I think
Speaker 2: there's some real benefit to that. The other thing is
Speaker 2: a lot of these lift companies, and they are lift companies,
Speaker 2: as you know in Europe. So most of these lift
Speaker 2: companies don't have city school, don't have food, don't have rentals,
Speaker 2: don't have retail, don't have logic. So they those lift
Speaker 2: companies can be exposed, right, I mean, because those are
Speaker 2: pretty profitable areas of the business. And so I think
Speaker 2: being part of a larger company, with the more consistent
Speaker 2: capital that we can put in, the more consistent employees
Speaker 2: that we can put in. I think those are opportunities
Speaker 2: long term. I also think from a marketing perspective, there's
Speaker 2: an opportunity for us to ultimately have a pass product
Speaker 2: that is that it's more of a European based pass
Speaker 2: product that can provide access to both Europe and North
Speaker 2: America and really be a compelling product for like Germany
Speaker 2: and the UK, which kind of do both. You know,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, there's not a lot of people in
Speaker 2: France that are going to have a common ski in
Speaker 2: the US. That's true with Austria, that's doue with Italy,
Speaker 2: that's true with Switzerland. But in the UK and Germany,
Speaker 2: I think we have real opportunities.
Speaker 1: So you have past partners. These are companies that you
Speaker 1: do not own, but people who own Epic passes can
Speaker 1: ski there. Just use one example, tell your ride, full
Speaker 1: Epic pass owner get seven days to tell your ride.
Speaker 1: How did the economics work on that? How is the
Speaker 1: money split up?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I can't Those are confidential, so I can't really you know,
Speaker 2: go into that, but obviously, yeah, there's there's an economic
Speaker 2: arrangement that that we think benefits us in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, tell You Ride is a good example. I
Speaker 2: think we see tell You Ride is a very unique brand,
Speaker 2: and the number of brands that are not owned by
Speaker 2: al Terra or US, yeah, they're not that many as
Speaker 2: you know, right that are that we really have could
Speaker 2: move the needle and have the unique power that a
Speaker 2: teal You Ride has. It's not the only one, but uh.
Speaker 2: And so they see a benefit I think in getting
Speaker 2: obviously revenue from us that they feel is more consistent
Speaker 2: and stable, and we think that, you know, that's that
Speaker 2: works out great for both of us. Now, of course,
Speaker 2: it's true that a resort like Tell You Ride as
Speaker 2: a resort we would own and in our minds, like
Speaker 2: you know, we take we like to create networks where
Speaker 2: we would be comfortable owning any of the resorts in
Speaker 2: our network, which is maybe a little different than Alterra.
Speaker 2: But the reason for that is, yeah, we don't. We don't.
Speaker 2: We want to make sure the experience of that resort
Speaker 2: is one that you know, we can get behind and
Speaker 2: it's consistent. We also want to make sure that, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is something that is for the long term we
Speaker 2: don't really want to get into the game of adding
Speaker 2: and subtracting partners over time, which sometimes can happen right
Speaker 2: when you create a network. So in our minds we
Speaker 2: do mean more owner operated as a as an MO,
Speaker 2: but for key resorts, like I tell you right now,
Speaker 2: we absolutely will We'll welcome them in as a partner.
Speaker 1: Is that a pre use payment like if I ski
Speaker 1: until you ride, they'll pays them a certain amount or
Speaker 1: is it a different structure?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all the agreements are confidential, so I can't
Speaker 2: get into the specifics of it, but but I can't
Speaker 2: say yeah, it's yeah. But of course there's an economic
Speaker 2: you know, trade that we're making with them, where obviously
Speaker 2: they're economically benefiting from that and we you know, in
Speaker 2: some way right that we're paying them, and then obviously
Speaker 2: we feel we're benefiting by getting more people on the path.
Speaker 1: Do you think that these partners do at the they'll
Speaker 1: own so many ski areas, is it worth it to
Speaker 1: give up some of the revenue to independent past partners? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think for us, I can't speak for al tara
Speaker 2: an Icon, but for us, we feel like we are
Speaker 2: very selective with how we put on partners, and we're willing,
Speaker 2: you know, to walk away if we don't think that
Speaker 2: that partner really adds as much. And the truth is,
Speaker 2: you know, in the end of the day, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: without any partners, we do feel like our network in
Speaker 2: North America is incredible and the resorts we own, which
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people lose sight of. You know, people
Speaker 2: think that a Whistler and a Veil and a Breckenridge
Speaker 2: and a park City, you know, are similar to you know,
Speaker 2: a Jackson, you know, or even an Assmen and they're not.
Speaker 2: I mean, they are. It's not saying that there always
Speaker 2: are an amazing resource. They are, but in terms of size,
Speaker 2: in terms of popularity, no, they're they're not. They're not equivalent.
Speaker 2: And so for us, yeah, we understand that we've got
Speaker 2: the resorts that you know, are really critical to the
Speaker 2: overall ski market, and so at that point we're really
Speaker 2: selective on just picking like who's going to add really
Speaker 2: value outside of that, and we do think Tell You
Speaker 2: Ride is one of those resources that does that for us.
Speaker 1: Okay, the Icon Pass is more expensive than the Epic Pass.
Speaker 1: In addition, after covid Epic lowered the price, it has
Speaker 1: since been raised, but we've also had inflation. How do
Speaker 1: you calculate the price and is there a fear that
Speaker 1: there's not that much headroom? You can't raise it too
Speaker 1: much without turning people off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't. You know, in our minds, we keep
Speaker 2: an eye on what Icon is doing on their pricing,
Speaker 2: but we are pricing our passes based on what we
Speaker 2: think is right in our own system between lift tickets
Speaker 2: and passes. And you know, in our minds we've done
Speaker 2: a lot of work on why we've come out with
Speaker 2: the pricing that we have. We are actually going to
Speaker 2: do even more work on that, you know, as in
Speaker 2: the up coming years there's new tools available with AI
Speaker 2: machine learning that allow us to take a complexity of
Speaker 2: a lot of this and make sure that we've optimized everything.
Speaker 2: And I think when you look at Icon in the
Speaker 2: end of the day, they do a lot of discounting,
Speaker 2: you know that we don't do like renewal discounts and
Speaker 2: you know, bount money discounts and things like that, where
Speaker 2: it's kind of like we have a little bit cleaner,
Speaker 2: more consistent approach right to how we price, and I
Speaker 2: think others within the industry sometimes have a little bit more. Oh,
Speaker 2: here's the lead price, but then we have all these
Speaker 2: you know, sales on the side. We don't tend to
Speaker 2: do that. But yeah, for us, we see ourselves as
Speaker 2: the price leader, like and setting the market for both
Speaker 2: price and product. And again we do keep an eye
Speaker 2: on what everybody else is doing, but a lot of
Speaker 2: what we do is based on the analysis that we're
Speaker 2: seeing in our own business.
Speaker 1: What about the concept of the so called black pass.
Speaker 1: They have had it at Snowbird, they had a park
Speaker 1: City before you owned it. They have it a copper which,
Speaker 1: for an additional fee, you do not have to wait
Speaker 1: in line or in a much much shorter line. What
Speaker 1: is Veil Resorts philosophy relative to.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, we don't. That's not something that that we
Speaker 2: that we have been a fan of. You know, in
Speaker 2: the end of the day, for us, we feel like,
Speaker 2: you know that cutting the line is really reserved for
Speaker 2: ski school, and in our minds that's because ski school
Speaker 2: is you know, they are providing lessons to people and
Speaker 2: so ultimately that's something that we think, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: that's a part of that experience that we give. And
Speaker 2: if there are people who just want to use it
Speaker 2: as a line cutting option. That's fine. We we obviously
Speaker 2: understand that and support that as well. Some people say, well,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's so expensive. It could be you know,
Speaker 2: at Veil at peak time, a private lesson could be
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred dollars or whatever. But if you get a
Speaker 2: group of four or five people together on a per
Speaker 2: day basis to you know, to skip all the lists,
Speaker 2: you know that they may think that's a reasonable option.
Speaker 2: That is kind of our black path, and we feel
Speaker 2: like we'd rather in our minds that if we've opened
Speaker 2: up a black path, we absolutely withoud decountabalization from our
Speaker 2: ski school and I think it would put pressure on
Speaker 2: that and we maybe which is different than some of
Speaker 2: these other resorts, but we're trying to drive as much
Speaker 2: business into our ski school and with our instructors as
Speaker 2: we possibly can. It's a good business for us, and
Speaker 2: we think that creates a healthy dynamic for the instructors.
Speaker 1: Okay, Epic Gear, is this really a business? You talked
Speaker 1: about the pain points and going forward the Epic Gear.
Speaker 1: I walk past the Epic Gear area every day when
Speaker 1: I go to go skiing, and it's always two guys
Speaker 1: who look like stoners who have their elbows on the
Speaker 1: counter and there's almost no one there. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, when people have to put their
Speaker 1: skis on the rack, there's almost no one there. I
Speaker 1: know that there is a delivery component. In addition, is
Speaker 1: this a good idea that the public is really going
Speaker 1: to accept? You know, there are a lot of good
Speaker 1: ideas that the public doesn't go. And to what degree
Speaker 1: has it it's already been in operation, to what degree
Speaker 1: is it a business already?
Speaker 2: So what I would say is this, I think the
Speaker 2: core part of my epic gear. I mean, we kind
Speaker 2: of we were testing a lot of things last year
Speaker 2: in terms of like all the different components of what
Speaker 2: an elevated experience on my epic year could look like.
Speaker 2: But I would say that the core part it and
Speaker 2: I think you can see it in the name itself.
Speaker 2: Mypic gear is about you being able to pick the
Speaker 2: gear that you want and either having that gear available
Speaker 2: all season long, right if that's what you want, or
Speaker 2: you can pick close in if you don't want to
Speaker 2: tell us what gear you want all season long, but
Speaker 2: you'll still be able to pick from our inventory of
Speaker 2: the best gear and the best boots. The Boa Boots
Speaker 2: as we talked about earlier. In our minds, that's that
Speaker 2: is a sea change concept. We think it has huge
Speaker 2: opportunity and could be a very big business in the
Speaker 2: industry because ultimately, right now, the reason why people own
Speaker 2: gear most people is because they don't really want to
Speaker 2: own gear, but they own it because they want to
Speaker 2: make sure when they get to the mountain that they've
Speaker 2: got the boot and the ski that they want. The
Speaker 2: reason why people when people rent gear, they don't own
Speaker 2: it obviously, but then most people are not happy necessarily
Speaker 2: with all the choices and options. A lot of people
Speaker 2: feel like they're not getting the best gear, or if
Speaker 2: they rent, they're not getting the same thing the next
Speaker 2: time they go back. Maybe they had a boot or
Speaker 2: they had a ski that they really like, but now
Speaker 2: you don't know that you're going to get the same
Speaker 2: thing next time. So people are kind of starting new
Speaker 2: every time they go and rent. In our mind, that
Speaker 2: is an antiquated approach to how people should use gear,
Speaker 2: and so I do see this as a big transformational event,
Speaker 2: but it's not easy to do. You could just imagine
Speaker 2: all the logistics and the technology that's required to make
Speaker 2: something like that successful. So we're going to You know,
Speaker 2: this is not something that's an overnight It's not like
Speaker 2: just creating a little app, you know, on your phone.
Speaker 2: It's a lot that goes into it. But ultimately, I
Speaker 2: think it could be a real game Jinger.
Speaker 1: And to what degree do you feel responsibility for the
Speaker 1: health of the manufacturers? Ski sales? Companies that make skeys
Speaker 1: have gone way down. A lot of them are conglomerates
Speaker 1: where they have other revenue streams. If theyil is purchasing equipment,
Speaker 1: inherently it's a discount. Volume players get a discount, and
Speaker 1: certainly there are special rental packages as someone is wanting
Speaker 1: something of lesser quality. But if this my epic gear
Speaker 1: is successful, it's going to affect the overall sales of
Speaker 1: these companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, I'd say it's a shift, right,
Speaker 2: So exactly how this plays out, I don't know, and
Speaker 2: over what time period I do. It does matter to
Speaker 2: me that these companies are healthy. I would say that
Speaker 2: we also know that, you know, the retail business on
Speaker 2: skis and boots is also challenged, right beyond certainly the
Speaker 2: brick and mortar retail business is a challenging business. We're
Speaker 2: obviously a big player in and that's a challenging business
Speaker 2: given online dynamics. But of course, like for online, it's
Speaker 2: not the same experience, right, people don't get to touch
Speaker 2: and feel the product. So I think my concern when
Speaker 2: I look out is like, if we're seeing struggling retail
Speaker 2: dynamics for hard goods, what will that mean in the
Speaker 2: long run if people can't touch and feel this product.
Speaker 2: I think it could actually reduce the owner cycle of
Speaker 2: replacement no matter what. And so in our minds like, actually,
Speaker 2: this could be an opportunity where people get to touch
Speaker 2: and feel without making this huge commitment the best gear
Speaker 2: that's out there, right, And I actually think it'll bring
Speaker 2: them closer and more passionate about the gear, which of
Speaker 2: course means that when we're going to buy the new
Speaker 2: gear and new options and you know, so it's yes,
Speaker 2: just like the right, it's like everything like the music, right,
Speaker 2: as you know, Well, it's not that the business goes away,
Speaker 2: it's just in my shift, and I think that's something
Speaker 2: we want to try and be on the front end.
Speaker 1: So at this point in time, how often do you
Speaker 1: go skiing?
Speaker 2: Well, I would say I don't know. What would I
Speaker 2: say if I had to guess for this year, I'm
Speaker 2: going to say twenty to thirty days, you know, something
Speaker 2: in that in that range, i'd say my own skiing
Speaker 2: tracks kind of most most people, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: I was skiing forty to fifty days a year when
Speaker 2: my kids were five to you know, nineteen, and once
Speaker 2: my kids went off to college and now live on
Speaker 2: the East Coast. Yeah, it's less, you know, and but yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean so by the way, that's a recreation, recreational days.
Speaker 2: I spent a bunch of time at our resorts or
Speaker 2: getting on the hill to you know, do the work
Speaker 2: part of it's differently, but yeah, I'm you know, this
Speaker 2: is something yeah, I've loved since I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Okay, so other than the twenty thirty days, how many
Speaker 1: days are you on the hill when it's essentially air
Speaker 1: quodes work?
Speaker 2: Oh I don't know either, Yeah, on the hill. And
Speaker 2: I could be on the hill, you know, in the
Speaker 2: non skiing season too, like and shoes or boots, but yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I would probably be I'll probably be in
Speaker 2: ski resorts. Yeah, forty days, you know, at least forty
Speaker 2: fifty days something like that.
Speaker 1: So if you are deciding to go skiing. Where do
Speaker 1: you go?
Speaker 2: Well, as you know, Bob, I have I have a
Speaker 2: house in Veil, and you know, I love all of
Speaker 2: our resorts of course, like all my kids, but no,
Speaker 2: I have a special connection with Bail that goes goes
Speaker 2: back aways and obviously it's where you know, I spent teaching,
Speaker 2: you know, and learning to ski with my kids them
Speaker 2: learning to ski, and then meet skiing with them and
Speaker 2: our family up there for countless holidays with you know,
Speaker 2: my extended family or their friends. So like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a very very special place for me. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we've I've also gone with my kids, you know, and
Speaker 2: my family and friends right to ski Whistler, which is
Speaker 2: an incredible experience in ski Peak six at Breckenridge, or
Speaker 2: off the Imperial Express or right Stone Creek, Shoots and
Speaker 2: Beaver Creek, yeah, or the out back of Keystone or
Speaker 2: nine to ninety at Park City. Plus I'm going to
Speaker 2: ski other places like Snowbird and Deer Valley and Jackson
Speaker 2: and all kinds of different places in Europe, Japan. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the great things. And honestly,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm most passionate about and why I
Speaker 2: love the sport. It's like a every day is different,
Speaker 2: the weather is different, the experience is different. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I get to be outdoors doing something I love. And yeah,
Speaker 2: having that be my job as well, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: So what's your strategy at fail you're starting? Where do
Speaker 1: you go?
Speaker 2: Oh? For me, it depends on the day, I'd say, right,
Speaker 2: it could be if it's a if it's a powder day, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going up the gondola, you know, and then uh yeah,
Speaker 2: over to Chair fourteen or down five and up seven
Speaker 2: and up nine and yeah, back to Blue Sky. So
Speaker 2: I mean, if I can get you know, if I'm up,
Speaker 2: if I'm if I'm out there early enough, no, then
Speaker 2: I'm skiing like Forever and Wow and Rickey Thridge, you know.
Speaker 2: But then I'll go over maybe ski Genghis, right, you know,
Speaker 2: So then I'm making my you know, all the way over.
Speaker 2: So maybe I'm then skiing the slot and I'm skiing
Speaker 2: Genghis and then I'm going back to Blue Sky and
Speaker 2: going you know over to our earls and skiing CJ's
Speaker 2: and you know, and and it's kind of taking a
Speaker 2: couple of laps there then going back across and skiing
Speaker 2: lovers Leap and then down to Pete's maybe doing one
Speaker 2: run on resolution or two runs on resolution, you know,
Speaker 2: then lunch, then back and then yeah, then I'll kind
Speaker 2: of finish up my day skiing. You know, it's still good.
Speaker 2: Then I'll be back skiing. Yeah, like all the other
Speaker 2: you know. Now I'm skiing Opre Fou, I'm skiing you know,
Speaker 2: maybe WFO or you know. Then I'm going into the
Speaker 2: all the outer locations or into Teacup.
Speaker 1: Just to drill a little bit. So if you're not
Speaker 1: out early, you will take the gondola to four and
Speaker 1: then take the road all the way to fourteen and
Speaker 1: then go to the back.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Probably, Well, I don't know, or I'm yes, I would
Speaker 2: do that, or I would take I might even go
Speaker 2: all the way over to depending on the day, go
Speaker 2: over to the bottom of six, take six up and
Speaker 2: then go from six the top of six to to ten,
Speaker 2: ten to fourteen, fourteen up, or I might go down
Speaker 2: to Yeah, take the take take the gondola up four up, down,
Speaker 2: you know, to the bottom, and then maybe take slot
Speaker 2: and then go up nine and then go into either
Speaker 2: Teacup or Genghis. You know whatever, and then get from there.
Speaker 2: Some of this also depends on like how good the
Speaker 2: snow is in all the gullies, so how many cat
Speaker 2: tracks are you taking to get back or can you
Speaker 2: actually ski through the gullies to get to Yeah, the
Speaker 2: base of the blue cut.
Speaker 1: Well that's what you know. People don't realize they talk
Speaker 1: about the lines. I mean, if I have to start
Speaker 1: at the gondola, if there's a big line at three
Speaker 1: and four, I just take the road to ten. And
Speaker 1: what people don't know. You know, you can ski down
Speaker 1: half of the front side and take the road over
Speaker 1: to six. Certainly once you get like ten, ten thirty,
Speaker 1: there's no line at six, and there's never been a
Speaker 1: line at ten. I don't know if I want to
Speaker 1: give away all my secrets. But by the same token,
Speaker 1: people are bitching about the lines. I don't get it.
Speaker 2: I agree, well, you and I have the great fortune
Speaker 2: of being able to do this and recreate in these
Speaker 2: amazing places, and yeah, it's awesome and I feel super lucky.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I just want to leave it. People
Speaker 1: don't understand the allure of skiing. You referenced it earlier. Yes,
Speaker 1: you are outside b certainly if you're in the West.
Speaker 1: Ten's not to be that cool. With the technical improvements
Speaker 1: of the equipment or such that. It's not like the
Speaker 1: old days, not like the old Duelfold days underwhere you
Speaker 1: know they have much better runderwear. There's a thrill in skiing.
Speaker 1: It's not like tennis. You don't have to be good
Speaker 1: to enjoy it. As long as you're at the limit
Speaker 1: of your ability. You could be on the beginner slope
Speaker 1: and be thrilled. And unlike water skiing or so many
Speaker 1: other sports, the hill is different. The hill changes certainly
Speaker 1: if you go to another you know, people always ask
Speaker 1: why I'm such a ski fanatic, and usually it's matter
Speaker 1: have you ever done it? If you do not, everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna love it, okay, But there's a certain magic even
Speaker 1: go on, you know, social media. There's a woman you
Speaker 1: know who learned how to ski in her twenties who
Speaker 1: lives in breck skis one hundred days a year. You
Speaker 1: just get the bug.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: There's the issue of ski bums now that people come
Speaker 1: from Australia and South America. But I'll leave my rap
Speaker 1: at that. It's been a great pleasure talking you. Let's
Speaker 1: hope for a good snow season. Your ski areas are
Speaker 1: starting to open. Oh one final question. Do you own
Speaker 1: your equipment or do you use what's in Epic gear?
Speaker 2: Both? So, I own equipment, but as you can well imagine,
Speaker 2: like I own a son, so many pairs of everything
Speaker 2: that you know, I tend not to throw them away.
Speaker 2: But I've also used my Epic gear, so I used both.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: It was awesome, Bob. I really appreciate you taking the
Speaker 2: time to have this conversation. You and I have communicated
Speaker 2: going all the way back, and so yeah, an awesome,
Speaker 2: awesome opportunity for me to talk to you and all
Speaker 2: your listeners, and I hope to see you up on
Speaker 2: the hill of Vail.
Speaker 1: Just one correction, because I feel guilty. When the Epic
Speaker 1: Pass was launched it was still the high speed chair
Speaker 1: because the gondola was installed in twenty twelve, and I
Speaker 1: just want to go one step further. You know, listen,
Speaker 1: I know a lot of Veil haters, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: the infrastructure upgrades, you know what happened with north Woods
Speaker 1: and now even game creaking the gondola. It's, as I say,
Speaker 1: my only complaint with Vail would be wow. I wish
Speaker 1: there could be more. You know, h territory open with
Speaker 1: the rules looks the aside of rules. I know how
Speaker 1: difficult that is in any of them. I'm gonna leave
Speaker 1: it there, Rob, thanks so much for taking this time
Speaker 1: with my audience. Till next time. This is Bob left
Speaker 1: six