Vail stock price tumbled while Park City patrollers dug in for a strike

BROOMFIELD — Vail Resorts Inc. (NYSE: MTN) saw its stock price slide more than 5% over the five days leading up to the start of trading Monday as a ski patrol strike in Utah disrupted operations at Park City Mountain, leaving some skiers steaming mad during one of the Broomfield-based resort operators’ busiest times of year. 

The Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association union, which has been on strike since late last month in hopes of winning a base wage raise from $21 to $23 per hour, said in an Instagram post that Vail “forced this walkout by bargaining in bad faith and repeatedly violating the National Labor Relations Act.”

The work stoppage by union members resulted in hours-long waits for ski lifts at the Utah resort, according to social media users. Park City Mountain’s online lift and terrain status tracker showed that as of Monday morning 25 of 41 lifts were operating and 103 out of 350 trails were open. 

“I know the experience at the mountain over the peak holiday period was frustrating for our skiers and riders,” Park City Mountain chief operating officer Deirdra Walsh wrote Monday in a letter to resort guests and the public. “On behalf of the resort, I want to apologize to everyone that we haven’t been able to open the terrain we had hoped for by now, and that the line wait times were longer than usual during the peak holiday, because of the ski patrol union strike. This was not the holiday skiing and riding experience anyone wanted, and we know that.”  

Meanwhile, the ski patrol union is asking would-be Vail customers to “show your support by halting spending at Vail Resorts properties for the duration of this strike.”

Vail’s stock price fell from $190.97 on Dec. 30, 2024 to $174.04 on Friday, Jan. 3. Prices have rebounded slightly since, finishing Monday’s trading at $178.67.

The work stoppage left some Park City visitors angry and frustrated with both the striking patrollers and Vail Resorts. A chant of “Pay your employees!” broke out over the weekend among a throng of skiers waiting for a lift, according to a ski publication Powder Magazine.

Walsh’s letter said that “the commitment” from non-striking patrollers who are working at Park City “right now is nothing short of remarkable. It is heartbreaking to see not just them, but all our employees, putting up with relentless harassment online and in person that is absolutely shameful. They don’t deserve it, and it needs to stop.”

Walsh claims that union negotiators walked out of the first of three mediation sessions scheduled for late December and early January.

“Since day 1, we have been ready to get back to work as soon as Vail Resorts offers a fair contract,” the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association said on social media. But while the strike continues, Vail Resorts “continues to impose their anti-worker strategy by flying in scabs rather than coming to the table with a reasonable offer.”

Some of the replacement workers sent to Utah to cross the picket line at Park City Mountain were workers at Vail’s Colorado resorts, according to multiple media reports. 

A Vail representative told BizWest on Monday morning that the company is “resuming mediation with the union today.”

The Park City strikes are occurring just months Vail Resorts told investors and regulators that it will be laying off 14% of its corporate workforce and about 1% of its operations staff as part of a two-year “transformation plan” aimed at reversing downward revenue and earnings trends. 

In addition to layoffs, Vail, which has grown from 10 resorts to 42 and doubled its workforce over the last decade, said in fall 2024 that its transformation plan includes “leveraging … best practices and introducing new tools to scale the way operations are supported across the company,” consolidating and outsourcing internal business services and call centers, and using technology to improve workforce efficiency.

Vail hopes to achieve $100 million in annualized savings by the end of fiscal 2026.

The Utah patrollers are attempting to flex that labor-organization muscles while a unionization wave is gaining steam at Colorado’s ski resorts. 

Ski patrollers at Eldora Mountain in Boulder County voted last year to form a union, joining their unionized peers at Colorado ski areas including Loveland, Breckenridge, Steamboat Springs and Telluride. Patrollers at Arapahoe Basin are expected to hold a unionization vote this week, according to the Denver Post. 

Union ski patrollers in Colorado blasted Vail Resorts in a letter to company management, Snowboarder Magazine reported over the weekend. 

“Through the company’s tactics of pressuring, coercing, and intimidating skilled patrol leaders to travel to Park City to join the ‘Patrol Support Team,’ you caused irreparable harm to both your patrol labor force and patrol management across all affected resorts,” the letter from union ski patrollers at Breckenridge, Keystone, Crested Butte reportedly said.

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