Vail Resorts records decline in season-to-date skier visits

BROOMFIELD — Vail Resorts Inc. (NYSE: MTN) reported a decline in season-to-date total skier visits at its North American resorts of 1.7% compared with the prior year. Season-to-date total skier visits were down 18.3% compared with 2020.

The numbers are subject to revision and exclude the company’s recently acquired Seven Springs, Hidden Valley and Laurel Mountain resorts.

Key highlights:

• Season-to-date total lift ticket revenue increased 25.9% compared with the prior year season-to-date period and declined 4.6% compared with the fiscal year 2020 season-to-date period.
• Season-to-date ski school revenue increased 59.1%, and dining revenue increased 64.7% compared to the prior year season-to-date period. Compared with the comparable period in fiscal year 2020, ski school revenue and dining revenue were down 25.2% and down 45.1%, respectively.
• Retail/rental revenue for North American resort and ski area store locations increased 36.3% compared to the prior year season-to-date period, and decreased 19.5% compared the comparable season-to-date period in fiscal year 2020.

Vail CEO Kirsten Lynch highlighted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as “challenging early season conditions.”

“In addition to the impacts associated with the challenging conditions, we believe that the significant acceleration of COVID-19 cases associated with the Omicron variant has negatively impacted our results along with the broader travel sector as we expect certain guests reconsidered travel plans and were impacted by related flight cancellations,” Lynch said in a statement.” The impact of COVID-19 cases amongst our employees and the related employee exclusions from work resulted in further challenges in an already difficult staffing environment.”

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