Vail and Perisher: Aussie skiers to benefit from cheap lift access

The immediate gain is in well-priced lift access. While there are other costs – not least airfares, accommodation and après ski – the measuring stick for skiing has long been the lift ticket. 

For $749, or the price of about six day tickets, skiers and boarders can buy Perisher's "Freedom Pass with Epic Benefits" and ride the lifts all season at Perisher and virtually as long as they like during the northern season at any of the Vail resorts – Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin in Colorado, Park City and Canyons in Utah and Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood in the Lake Tahoe area of California and Nevada.

The fine print limits access to 10 days at Vail and Beaver Creek and applies some restrictions during certain North American holiday periods, but there is still enormous value in the offer.

The Australian ski market is well-informed and highly mobile. Perisher and Vail estimate there are around 1 million skier visits by Australians to the northern hemisphere each year (a skier visit is one skier for one day, so if they stay a fortnight, that's one skier accounting for 14 skier visits).

Vail Resorts wants those skiers and in buying Perisher, they've bought access to the major share of them and made a major play for some more. 

The value pricing of the Freedom Pass usually ends in November, but by putting it back on sale until May 31, Perisher is effectively saying to any uncommitted Australian: "come and ski with us and you can ride the lifts of any of Vail's resorts for nothing."

This isn't the first time Perisher has put a rocket under the local industry. It also shook things up in 2011 when it first introduced its Freedom Pass, a well-priced, advanced purchase season-long lift pass. It was based in part on Vail Resorts' Epic Pass where the value in the pass is used to lock skiers and boarders to their resorts. The resort is willing to make a slight sacrifice in yield on the ticket to secure customer loyalty.

Perisher's pass was matched almost immediately by its Snowy Mountains neighbour Thredbo, then Falls Creek and Hotham and, eventually, Mt Buller in Victoria.

Asked what his Australian competitors might be thinking about this latest move, Perisher chief executive Peter Brulisauer thought they'd be "having a very close look at that ($749) number."

They sure will. Thredbo is part of the "Mountain Collective" which is an international alliance of the likes of Whistler in Canada and Aspen in Colorado formed to combat Vail's dominant position. Yet its advantage to Thredbo's season pass holders is a 50 per cent ticket discount at the North American resorts, not an automatic ride on the lifts.

How Thredbo and the Victorian resorts respond this time around remains to be seen, but skiers and boarders can only gain from the competitive tension.

Seen through the prism of climate change, if Vail needs to justify the Perisher purchase to its shareholders, Brulisauer argues that they can do so with confidence.

"Climate change is something that affects all ski areas, not just Australian ski areas. The seasons vary wherever you might be, but at Perisher we have Australia's most reliable natural snow cover and on top of that, our investment in snowmaking gives us the most reliable cover overall.

"When one of the world's leading resort operators invests in Australia's biggest resort, that's a big vote of confidence in the Australian industry and a big vote of confidence in the Snowy Mountains region," Brulisauer said.

While skiers and boarders gain, so do the mountain staff – the ski instructors, lift operators, snowmakers and snow groomers who work for Vail and Perisher, with potential for  year-round or season-to-season employment in the greater resort network.

It could also improve Perisher's capability to develop its village. Vail Resorts are no strangers to property development, it has underpinned the US resort business for decades.

"A better value product means more customers," Brulisauer said, "and Perisher's customers will want somewhere to stay. Vail brings with it a very experienced team when it comes to strategies around property development."

There was a public sale process for Perisher in 2005 but no sale eventuated. Brulisauer wouldn't say whether Vail was part of that process, nevertheless, this time around, he says they were in discussions for about a year before reaching this agreement.

Traveller's Jim Darby is an award-winning ski writer and author of three books on Australian skiing and ski resorts.