Results 51 to 75 of 160
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02-28-2021, 11:02 PM #51Registered User
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personally i think most large mtns have a use 'em and lose 'em stance to employees so they don't stay long and have to treat them better
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02-28-2021, 11:31 PM #52
It's a well lubricated cycle that has been going on for many decades. $15/hr won't do shit. That's like $12-13 bucks after taxes and probably less. Good luck on that too.
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03-01-2021, 08:44 AM #53
why not? Vail results are the aggregation of 37 mountains in different regions. It may not be the perfect microcosm but I stand by my comment that the majority of mountains make the majority of their money through pass and ticket sales, not food and beverage. As you can see from Vail, F&B is a distant last in revenue streams within the mountain segment.
And what does 'independently-owned' mountains have to do with it?powdork.com - new and improved, with 20% more dork.
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03-01-2021, 10:27 AM #54
And what does 'independently-owned' mountains have to do with it?[/QUOTE]
Not an expert but my independent resort sells season passes for less than $500 and you can get a day pass for less than $50 so their net income is weighted significantly more toward F&B and retail than a "mega".
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03-01-2021, 10:33 AM #55
I get that. I just didn't get why there was a limitation to independent mountains. It wasn't part of the original start of the conversation.
And those same resorts that sell tickets and passes more cheaply also sell their food and beverage at more reasonable prices and tend to have fewer offerings.powdork.com - new and improved, with 20% more dork.
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03-01-2021, 12:13 PM #56
^^^ This. Because my local mountain with the above pass/ticket prices also sells a bowl of soup or a slice for $3.50 and a Kokanee tall boy for $3. Basically you can fully fed and quite drunk for less than $20. I am quite certain there are not comparable options at Vail.
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03-01-2021, 12:17 PM #57Registered User
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I think that’s because lift tickets are pure profits minus the depreciation cost for lifts while food and beverage is something resold with whatever profit margin they want. Goods like resort logos, stickers etc are big margins because of the logo they put on cheap crap.
Anyway, I agree that this is a lifestyle jobs that doesn’t pay well. So there needs to be more perks if they are not going to pay their employees. Have employees parking right up front, employee line at lifts, etc. These perks also incentivize local ski bum employment vs international workers who don’t care about skiing.
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03-01-2021, 12:30 PM #58Registered User
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If you live in a real town with real jobs and real people that also happens to have a ski hill you are more likely to have a living wage
Lee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know
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03-01-2021, 01:26 PM #59
Anyone who thinks that F&B is a revenue source even remotely approaching ticket sales. I’ve got some ocean front property in Nevada to sell you. F&B is just a little icing on the cake compared to everything else.
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03-01-2021, 04:40 PM #60lysterine
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It is an interesting question as to why lift ticket prices have soared, but the workers manning those lifts haven't seen a similar increase in their wages across the same time period. Same could probably be said for price of ski lessons and their associated ski instructors.
I'm going to assume F&B workers see more appropriate wage increases since tips generally track along with increased food prices. That is if people keep the tips coming at a proper rate.
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03-01-2021, 05:13 PM #61
Relatively uneducated stab here:
I assume most large ski areas will have to report "losses" this year because of the super fat PPP loans they all got?
They will have "losses" on the books despite every single person with eyeballs seeing that the big resorts were all busier than ever this year.
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03-01-2021, 05:13 PM #62Registered User
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[QUOTE=tetzen;6251248]It is an interesting question as to why lift ticket prices have soared, but the workers manning those lifts haven't seen a similar increase in their wages across the same time period. Same could probably be said for price of ski lessons and their associated ski instructors.
Because they don't have to pay more. Every fall Thousand of young people head west with dreams of powder dancing in their head knowing they won't make jack. As long as they can fill employee roles with people who are happy to eat ketchup soup and leftover fries there won't have to pay more. It's kinda like when Warren Miller or TGR show up to film. All they have to ask is "who wants to jump off of that" and 20 hands go up...they don't need to pay people to do ski movies and never will. Same thing.
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03-01-2021, 06:46 PM #63
Yup. Harder and harder to come by though.
Yup.
Pure profits minus operating and permitting costs, insurance, utilities, patrol, snowmaking and grooming, parking and snow removal, resort janitorial, ticket checkers, lifties, lift maintenance, facilities and building maintenance, marketing and advertising, accounting, counsel, henchman resources, vehicle maintenance, transportation, trail crew, FS road maintenance and improvements(yes, many resorts are responsible for keeping up uncle sam’s roads to some extent), oh and lift...depreciation...cost? I’m not certain you understand how depreciation works. But other than that, it’s pure profit. That being said...
White upper- and middle-class Americans that don’t live near ski areas have made it clear that exorbitant ticket prices are no barrier to going on ski vacations, but if anyone thinks that resorts are going to start investing in human capital (their term, not mine) unless they’re forced to, well...
Yes and no. There aren’t as many tipped jobs at resort F&B as many people think, and they’re not in the areas where resorts make their money. The waitresses at Beano’s Cabin might be making more in tips with increased menu prices, but the J1s and HS dropouts dishing up chili on the line at the lodge don’t get tips and aren’t seeing pay bumps. There are some ski schools that have seen significant (read: greater than cost of living increase) bumps in recent years, but it certainly doesn’t match the escalating cost of ski school industry wide. Lessons are obscenely expensive nowadays, as many of you with kids know, but the PSIA dorks are weighing spending hundreds on another cert to get a dollar-an-hour bump when they’re only teaching a couple days a week because they don’t make enough money to do it full time. I can’t share too much empathy, it’s still one of the best paying jobs on snow.
Don’t forget who really pays the bills at almost every single resort: joeys from out of town who rarely ski. Are they going to have an objectively better experience dealing with a level 3 PSIA geek, a liftie with ten years experience vs two, a shoprat like me with 20+yrs on the bench vs some kid who just picked up an iron in November, a line cook with five more years experience heating up soup in a bag? Actually, yes. But are they going to notice any benefit when they really just suck at the thing they came to do? Not really. Gapers pay the bills, and you know what they want? To be greeted with a smile, spend more than an hour in one go outside for the first time since the Fourth of July, take pictures with their family and not be at home. Those things can be provided by relatively inexperienced and underpaid staff.
The distinction that matters is between skiers and people who ski. Skiers make sacrifices to put skiing as a primary focus in their lives, people who ski make sacrifices to occasionally enjoy a recreational activity while buying lodging, food, fuel and entertainment for the whole family. Many more people devolve from the former to the latter than the other way around, and there are way more of the latter than the former. If I, Johnny SkiBum, ski 100+ days/yr, you know how much money the resort makes off of me? Jack shit. I park in the free lot, bring lunch in a bag, have beers in the car. You know how much they make off Bubba and the kids skiing for a long weekend? Hell of a lot more than my season pass.
All that is to say, people are going skiing. Nothing seems to impact that, even a pandemic. And if they’re coming anyway, why pay anybody more to do their job when your non-discerning customers are going to shell out anyway?
The pandemic has finally accelerated the death of the office block, and with fewer and fewer people having to live in fucking Midland, TX for work, the earnings disparity in ski towns is only going to get worse, and faster now than it has in the past. It’s not sustainable, but neither is winter in most of the US, so why should Rob Katz worry about paying the mindless functionaries any more? Better to get the shareholders a bigger check now since it’s all going to go tits up in fifty years anyway.
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03-01-2021, 07:35 PM #64
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03-01-2021, 07:49 PM #65
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03-01-2021, 09:28 PM #66registered abuser
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Zombli nailed it
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03-02-2021, 09:01 AM #67
To a T.
Also nailed the lid on the coffin in 50 years.
50 seems optimistic, prolly much less for most ski areas.
Only gonna get more crowded with fewer ski bum jobs in the future as we lose ski areas to climate change. Low wage jobs are and will be clamored for increasingly.
Enjoy this sliding on snow thing while we still have it, eh?
These are the good old days...Time spent skiing cannot be deducted from one's life.
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03-02-2021, 09:13 AM #68
Well....their forgiveness has nothing to do with TAXABLE income. If they get forgiveness, it will hit their Income Statement.
Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums"We had nice 3 days in your autonomous mountain realm last weekend." - Tom from Austria (the Rax ski guy)
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03-02-2021, 10:26 AM #69
+4 (?...lost count). That is about the best summation of the industry and the state of 'living wage' in ski areas that can be made. So long as kids dream about being ski bums, wages will remain low. Supply/Demand in practice.
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03-02-2021, 10:46 AM #70
Increase taxes to companies (or just close loopholes and make them actually pay what they should be in the first place), taxes on the ultra-rich, and implement a universal basic income. Anything you then earn through employment is just on top of that.
This is the way. There are sound economics behind this, and it's even been proven with experiments over the years. But it'll never happen on a broad scope in the USA (or Canada, likely) because for some reason people cannot stand to see others getting something "for free." The crab bucket mentality is our ultimate downfall, and is drilled in to us daily by the so-called Fiscal Conservatives™.
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03-02-2021, 11:01 AM #71
You guys are high if you think climate change is going to put the ski industry out of business in 50 years.
There has been a grand change in average temperature of just over 1 degree since 1880. 1.
People are going to be skiing in 50 years, the question is whether it will just be crazy rich asians and tech bros or if the little guy can still get a few turns in.Live Free or Die
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03-02-2021, 11:19 AM #72
You might be off a bit on the temp change. More specifically, the trend of temp change.
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03-02-2021, 11:26 AM #73
My number came straight from the Whitehouse.gov page, sourced to NOAA.
Argue all you want, people are going to ski in 50 years, saying otherwise is just grandstanding. The question is at what cost and how many will be able to afford it.Live Free or Die
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03-02-2021, 11:31 AM #74
I may be high, but you must be ignorant to think that global average temperature adequately encompasses the effects of climate change on the ski industry. Recently, average temperatures in American, European, and Asian mountains have been rising by .5° every decade. As a point of reference, over the last 50 years of intensifying warming, every named glacier in Glacier NP got smaller, some by more than 80%.
Climate change-driven scarcity is going to push us closer to the brink of societal failure, while conservative dumbfucks deny the science and claim "nothing's gonna change".
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03-02-2021, 11:31 AM #75
Mine's from EPA and a variety of any number of sources. Google it.
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