Vail buys Whistler

EMSC beat me to this one. =D>

I fall in the camp of those who much preferred Whistler being part of Mountain Collective, particularly since we are going to Whistler in 2016-17. I realize that might be a minority view. We will always be in Mountain Collective as long as both Mammoth and AltaBird are part of it. But this increases the odds that there may be selected seasons where we should also consider an Epic Pass.

I'm guessing the local W/B ski community will have some concerns because AFAIK its culture is very different from Vail's. There are times when a smart buyer should try to leave the local culture alone and IMHO this is one of them. If it's not broke, don't try to fix it.

Is this a big enough piece of Ski News to awaken admin from hibernation?
 
Tony Crocker":2m5isyia said:
I'm guessing the local W/B ski community will have some concerns because AFAIK its culture is very different from Vail's. There are times when a smart buyer should try to leave the local culture alone and IMHO this is one of them. If it's not broke, don't try to fix it.
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They didn't leave it alone in Park City, and received substantial community backlash as a result.

Tony Crocker":2m5isyia said:
Is this a big enough piece of Ski News to awaken admin from hibernation?
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Soon. Patience is a virtue, ya know...
 
Tony Crocker":3cuyyqxp said:
I fall in the camp of those who much preferred Whistler being part of Mountain Collective, particularly since we are going to Whistler in 2016-17.
Click to expand...

Well, then, you can now replace that with a trip to Telluride or Revelstoke this year.
 
Follow up article from the Denver Post. Mostly highlights the rather pricey levels of the deal. I also think Vail paid far more than necessary for Park City's base from Powdr, but it will never show until/unless there is a next economic recession. Everything looks good until suddenly it doesn't kind of deals. Question is whether Vail is big enough in the rest of it's properties to still do OK if/when said recession does hit.

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/08/0...conic-canadian-ski-resort-whistler-blackcomb/
 
Admin":18fszxdw said:
Tony Crocker":18fszxdw said:
I fall in the camp of those who much preferred Whistler being part of Mountain Collective, particularly since we are going to Whistler in 2016-17.
Click to expand...

Well, then, you can now replace that with a trip to Telluride or Revelstoke this year.
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Actually, for next season (2016-2017), Whistler/Blackcomb Resort is still being honored:
https://mountaincollective.com/?utm...eed&utm_content=Aspen&utm_campaign=S16strike5

OT: I had to reset my password; how do I change the temporary one? The email said to go to my profile page, but that page does not address passwords.
 
Yes, we knew from the original announcement that were were fine with Mountain Collective for the 2017 Whistler trip.

admin":2k1rjmxw said:
They didn't leave it alone in Park City, and received substantial community backlash as a result.
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I know admin is referring mainly to the business side, vertical integration, squeezing out local retailers etc. I suspect W/B as a purpose built resort by Intrawest has a fair amount of that already.

In terms of the mountain, Park City is a lot like Vail's Colorado resorts. W/B is a very different animal, with a strong local freeskiing community. W/B also has Extremely Canadian, which is like a European independent ski coach/guide service. I hope Vail has enough common sense to leave Extremely Canadian alone.
 
Actually, VR's biggest faux pas thus far in Utah was to file a trademark application on the name "Park City," notwithstanding the fact that the town with that name pre-dates the ski resort by ~100 years. That generated local protests that were sufficiently vigorous that VR actually withdrew the trademark application.

And if you're drawing Colorado comparisons, Park City may be very similar to, say, Breckenridge, but it's very different from places like Vail, Beaver Creek and Keystone, which are all very much company towns.
 
Vail's ridiculous EGO will get in the way and blind them of seeing the benefit of keeping Whistler-Blackcomb in the Mountain Collective in addition to the EPIC pass. However, maybe the Mountain Collective would ditch them.

As a Aspen Snowmass part-time local I always find the "Vail Sucks" "Aspen Sucks" rivalry interesting.

One day while skiing Snowmass I had the unfortunate pairing up on a quad chair with a Vail ski instructor (in uniform) and his two private lesson students. Yes, these morons come over to Aspen-Snowmass in uniform to ski with their private lessons regularly.

So on the ride up the lift the instructor after a brief "oh you're local here" he dives in to talking about the "Aspen Sucks" "Vail Sucks" thing and says its just a joke between the two resorts and it's all friendly. At that moment I realize this guy is clueless, so I said "Hold on a minute! When you say Aspen Sucks you may be just saying it as a friendly rivalry, but when someone from Aspen says Vail Sucks we mean it. Vail does suck!"

He was so taken back by my comments. It was like for the first time he really realized that people in Aspen really do hate Vail and we'd rather those who like Vail stay at their shitty mountain.

Whenever someone skiing Aspen-Snowmass ski area says they love Vail I immediately ask "Why the hell are you here? Please ski Vail from now on."

Of course I didn't drop it either. I immediately started to pepper him with questions asking how all of their endless catwalks on the front mountain are skiing this year and if on the last powder day he got a very rare, second, untracked powder run, and being it was January I also asked how the spring skiing had been so far this year in the Back Bowls.

My point in sharing this is that I don't like the acquisition at all. Vail is an arrogant operator.
 
egieszl,

Vail is pure wall street (CEO is former hedge fund guy). So it is as corporate as it can possibly get in the ski biz. Everything else is, at best, moderately corporate in the ski world by comparison. Then there are still quite a few mom & pop style operations.

I've met Rob Katz (CEO of Vail). Very smart, very type A, very driven, very Wall Street (except his clothes). He's also quite personable too. But definitely going places, and not afraid of anyone or ruffling a few feathers along the way to get where he is trying to drive Vail Inc to. I view Vail as an interesting experiment that has never been done in the ski biz before. Not evil by nature, but also not benign and definitely in it for the money.

So I'm not a fan of everything they do (or even close) by any means, but I have no particular horse in the race to cause me to hate Vail either. Hatred seems a bit over the top considering the various ego's that live in the Aspen valley too. Or is that part of the aesthetic? Two Kardashians arguing over who is prettiest?
 
It makes no sense for Vail to keep Whistler in the Mountain Collective even though that would certainly be good for me personally.

The fate of Extremely Canadian will be a good litmus test of whether Vail can make common sense exceptions to its usual method of operations.
 
Reaction from The Aspen Times:

http://www.aspentimes.com/news/23328991 ... sition-the\

"To at least one Aspen Skiing Co. executive, Vail Resorts’ acquisition of Whistler Blackcomb smacked of something out of the “Star Wars” movies.

“There is a great disturbance in the Force,” Skico Vice President of Marketing Christian Knapp tweeted on his private Twitter account shortly after news of the acquisition broke Monday morning. The tweet came with a link to a story about the Vail acquisition.

For Knapp, a former Vail executive, it must have felt a bit like “The Empire Strikes Back.” Knapp helped create the Mountain Collective ski pass, which banded together several independent resorts in competition with Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass. . . . "
 
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