In an effort to keep both their staff and skiing guests safe, Deer Valley Resort lowered its capacity limits for the entire season and is constantly reviewing its season pass visitation forecast and pre-sold daily lift tickets against the new limits. As a result, the resort has stopped the sale of season passes and daily lift tickets until after the new year.
Due to the increase in Deer Valley season pass sales, the resort announced Friday that it made the difficult?decision to place the sale of season passes on hold until they can reassess their on-mountain capacities.
Marketing Director Coleen Reardon also reports that daily lift tickets are sold out for the busy holiday week of December 28th through January 2nd, 2021 and are no longer available for purchase.
“We've never sold out this far in advance for the Christmas holiday period, the December holiday period, and in a revenue meeting we were reviewing our predictive behavior on Ikon and Deer Valley pass holders as well as daily ticket sales and we determined that we have reached our capacity December 28 through January 2nd,” she said. “And in that discussion, we have seen a big increase in season pass sales and you know it's COVID it would just got to keep everybody safe. So, we really felt like we needed a period of time when we know we're going to be really busy to assess our capacity issues and put everything else on hold.”
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Deer Valley didn’t do a reservation system – and Reardon says it was a difficult decision, but they felt they needed to protect the people who have already purchased and committed up front.
“This is so unlike Deer Valley to make those types of decisions,” Reardon said. “But we really feel like Ikon pass sales increased as the Deer Valley season passes and yeah, it was it was the right thing to do. Although I know there's going to be some disappointed guests who may have held off purchasing.”
Whether they reopen sales of season passes after the new year – she says remains to be seen.
“We have to assess the impacts of no reservations, our season pass visitation, our Ikon pass visitation - make sure the percentages that we're predicting still apply,” said Reardon. “And we're getting new data every day, which is awesome, and our revenue manager is all over that but it's you know we have to we have to wait and see.”
She says they’ll also have good information for the second busiest week of the season – over Presidents Day.
“I think what this will tell us – it’ll tell us two things,” Reardon said. “Whether or not we can handle anymore season pass capacity and two, when to cut off daily ticket sales, right, for the holiday periods because will have really hard percentages of what happens and the behavior of our current pass holders. They gave us their money upfront and Deer Valley season passes are not inexpensive and we want to make sure that those who committed to us are protected and can ski when they want to ski.”
It wasn’t an easy decision to make, she says and was made locally. She wasn’t sure if other Alterra Mountain resorts are facing similar sell outs.
She says they will be making be assessments daily during the holiday period to see how it plays out.
Due to daily tickets being unavailable for the last week of December, lessons and rentals will only be available for guests who have purchased a season pass,?an?Ikon Pass, or a?daily?lift ticket?for the requested dates.
Guests who have already purchased ski lift tickets or passes entitling them with access to the mountain during the December holiday period can call the resort to check for limited lesson and rental?availability.?
