The Deer Valley Ski Resort is opening this weekend for the 2019-2020 season.
President and CEO Todd Shallan, who is entering his second season with Deer Valley, told KPCW that they got off to a good start with some early winter weather in October.
“We should be about 16 lifts open on Saturday and somewhere between 35 and 40 trails, probably 75 percent of them groomed. And so we’ve been really successful with snowmaking this year. You’re right, the October piece that we had was amazing. The production 24 hours a day for almost ten days. And that held up pretty well with the warm phase that we had. And now with this storm and everything else—I was out on the mountain yesterday for a few hours, and it’s looking teriffic, it really is.”
He said it’s likely all the lifts will be open by Christmas. They’ve put over a million dollars into snowmaking and that will continue
The Park City Chamber/Bureau has reported that their bookings have been down a little. Shallan said the resort is seeing something different.
“Our lodging is up about 4 percent over last year. Importantly, it’s up in December and January. It’s a little bit behind in February, and just about flat in March. That doesn’t concern me, cause we have lots of time there. Our season pass sales are above last year both in volume and in total revenue. And our advance ticket sales are good, but unfortunately with the systems we had last year, I have nothing to compare it to.”
He said their staffing is in fairly good shape, though he can’t say they’re entirely staffed—in a state with a 2.7 percent unemployment rate.
“It’s difficult. But I’d say we’re good. We’ll be I’m sure having some overtime usage over the Christmas holidays and things like that. But nobody’s in a panic mode. We probably could use a few more cooks, and we could use a few more here and there. The team’s done a good job. And fortunately, we’ve got such a repeat, I would call it clientele that comes back every year to work for us. That really helps us and our employees are really important to us. And we really try to take very good care of them so that they do come back.”
Finally, he said the resort did well at the recent World Ski Awards in Kitzbuhel, Austria.
“It was great. We won the Best Ski Resort in the U.S. Stein Eriksen Lodge won Best Ski Hotel in the U.S. And Goldener Hirsch Inn won the Best Boutique Ski Hotel in the U.S.”
Deer Valley President and CEO Todd Shallan.
