Why are Colorado passes so cheap?

Shifty540

Shifty540

Active member
I saw Loveland and A Basin are opening tomorrow and was checking out the pricing on their seasons passes. Its like $350 bucks or so. I pay $300 to for my college pass to Stevens Pass up here in Washington. Stevens Pass is a sick ass mountain, but a normal pass is like $800. Crystal Mountain, another great local mountain is over a grand I have heard.

Why does it seem CO is so cheap? Due to the proximity of so many mountains and its very competitive for customers or what? I shudder to think I will be paying $800 next season when I am no longer in school. I love the PNW though, I would still rather live here than Colorado.

 
i paid 349 for a season pass to abaybay, breck ski stoned, then 10 days at vail and beaver creek, I paid that same price for stratton last season, i love colorado
 
About 15 years ago, Winter Park dropped their pass price, so everyone bought one. It started a season pass war, drove small ski areas out of business and lead to massive resort consolidation. The only benefit is that now we have cheap season passes. Yay economics! Now I can hike for turns on Berthoud for free!
 
supply and demand is exactly it

there are so many people up here that buy season passes they dont need to charge that much

there are an estimated 10,000 that come up to the mountains of colorado to ski from the front range

 
the massive amounts of tourists who pay ~$90/ticket, plus all of the other shit help keep the costs down, id imagine. plus, massive amounts of people buy the college pass, so....
 
Its simple dude. Colorado has a huge concentration of mountains close to each other and a huge amount of tourist. So what they do is make a cheap season pass which means when you come out as a tourist will you buy 10 day tickets at a few mountains for 90 a piece or will you just grab a season pass to one and ski that all ten days. the answer in most cases is the season pass. What they do is try to lock tourist in to there mountain and then just steal there money on food. lots of mountains will do this or some offer like a multiple day ticket that gives you a discount. Locals just get the sick deals cause there lucky
 
Because there are like 3 different companies that own like 10 resorts, they can afford to only charge 300 dollars for a pass to their 3 mountains they have.
 
actually, they bank on tourists paying the $70+ lift tickets. season passes are only available at the beginning of the season and can only be purchased in colorado (renewable online)
 
This argument is over!!!

I understad most of you are in High School and don't understand business, but Supply and Demand is the Answer.

A large concentration of skiers in a small area and several resorts to choose from.

I live in Seattle, but went to school in Boulder. Just ask ten people in Seattle if they ski or snowboard and I bet 1 will say yes, or a couple will lie and say they do, but go 1 day a year. There aren't very many skiers in Seattle!
 
Its amazing how many people have never skied here. We have awesome ski resorts here in Washington. I shake my head with disgust whenever I hear somebody has never skied or boarded.
 
do you actualy understand supply and demand? because by your logic it seems that as the demand goes down the prices go up, and thats not the case. If the demand is higher then the prices will be higher. So I don't understand why your saying that the reason Seattle/WA area passes are so expensive is because not very many people ski here.

and the reason why CO passes are so cheap is because the mountains are so damn flat. ya I said it.

but obviously it is supply and demand,

if for instance you take shit whole hil, Widwest, pretty much everyone who will ski that area lives close by, as its not worth driving the long distance for it, or much travel at all, for that reason, a very high percentage of the skiers on that mountain will be using a season pass instead of day tickets, thus the demand for the season pass is higher so they can charge more for it.

However if you look at CO with mountains like Vail, Breck, Aspen/Snowmass, ect, these are all destination ski resotrs, where people fly from all over the country and even world to ski. Thus a large proportion of the skiers are using day passes versus season passes, As such you see the extravegent $90 lift tickets but the relativly cheap season passes.

Simmilar case in WA state, not many people travel here to go skiing, while Crystal has some at mountain housing for guests, there really is no accomodation for 1 once a year guests, many of the people who ski these mountains ski every weekend Dec through Febuary. as such the demand is higher for season passes. although there is a still a fare demand for lift tickets from those that ski a hand full of days a year so we still see high lift ticket prices but still not the $80-$90 range.

 
Sounds like salt lake city, but the cheapest COLLEGE pass if 400 for one mountain. Not the best logic there.
 
supply and demand, but also the major mtns are owned by two companies. so when those companies compete they bundle their deals. hence, mutliple mtns on one pass. in comparison to slc you would probably see a similar trend if all the mountains were owned by two companies, not 8. their bigger so they can afford to be cheaper. plus because vail and intrawest sell so many passes they have a huge cash infusion in the fall and don't have to wait until xmas to have a large amount of revenue.
 
supply and demand doesnt mean why its cheap. its called dolllah dollah billz yall/some of the resorts have determined that lift tickets are an elastic good
 
It's because the income from season passes is absolutely minimal when compared to the $3000 + trips thousands of tourist take from October to June every year. Those long lines during the Christmas week pays for half of your ski pass. Not many would stay in Colorado and pay $800 for a pass if they could take a short drive to Utah or many of the other states around here that have skiing too.

Oh, and for everyone who knows so much about economics *sarcasm*, if you had paid attention in your most incredibly basic classes you would know that a ski pass is an artificially scarce good, not a common private good. This is because they are excludable (a.k.a Vail can deny them to anyone) and nonrival in consumption (a.k.a. Vail will not run out of passes they can give since there is no supply per se). Therefore, it's not just simply "Supply and Demand" at all. The supply is technically the optimal quantity of society (everyone gets to go for free). By charging a predetermined price, Vail resorts effectively limits the amount of people on the slopes to a rate that they deem appropriate. It's pretty much the exact same thing as a toll road if you think about it.

Cliffnotes: Not supply and demand. Why: Artificially scarce good. Difficulty: Easy.
 
If you're in college by Tahoe you need to buy a Squaw college pass it's only $300, if you're not in college it's almost $2000. Go to Med school! 8 years of $300 season passes to some sick ass terrain and a mountain with mainly skiers and not a lot of gapers.
 
Except its not, toll roads are used on like highways and shit but like ski areas are for skiing maaaaan. And hell lets just compare ski areas to a purely competitive market cuz snow is snow right?
 
word, its over $1000 for sugarloaf/sunday river this year...loon is ridiculous too. good thing i'm in colorado now! muwahaha
 
Well I'm fairly sure that makes no logical sense at all, but I have just decided that I no longer care.

Good day sir.
 
Actually, it is. In fact it is a "toll good" non comsumptive, naturally excludable, etc.

Vail has it figured out. They can afford to charge cheap prices because they are offset by the profits they make from tourism, and Real Estate investment. I am pretty sure real estate is the core of Vail's assets, and because of the sheer amount of base development at all of their mountains, their profits and assets are huge. Even in this current crunch the value of real estate in mountain resorts has stayed strong. They can basically give passes away and turn profits, it's incredible. We fucking pay for it with how bad the traffic is and the crowds, though. I've said it before on this forum and gotten torn apart but if they just increased their pass prices, and limited access more it would be better for everyone. And $12 sandwhiches. It's gotta be the sandwhiches.
 
Passes at one of my midwest resorts is 700$. Doesnt have a college discount cuz its not near a resort at all. Yet another resort has like 150$ season passes and if you go to the college by it you get a free season pass.
 
yeah i got an epic pass (all the vail mountains) this year and i think its cheaper then the season pass i got at stevens last year
 
the three mountains in the Washington DC/Maryland area(Liberty,Whitetail, Roundtop) have a season pass priced at 399 for all three mountains.

 
Vail is fucking smart. I was skiing with my dad one year at Vail and he bought a cookie at Mid-Vail. That fucking cookie was $3. I believe I told my dad he was "fucking stupid", and he wanted to wash my mouth out of with soap. In the end I was right. Vail gets you where it hurts which is pretty much everywhere. I fucking paid like $80 for a day-ticket last season, and that was with a discount.
 
you got it !!! colorado is prob one of the most concentrated overall skiing states as far as population goes and the amount of people that visit it.
 
You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. I know your mother thinks youre very smart but im sure a company like Intrawest or Vail Resorts knows how to run their business much better than any one here. If they have determined the optimal price for a ticket is $300, its $300 for a reason and not because of good will. Dont make yourself look like a douche by offering business strategies to them.

and youvegotsmail, I was making a funny because its pointless to discuss this when people have very little idea what they are talking about, sorry.
 
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