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New England Vail Buys Stowe Mountain Resort (updated Title)
- Thread starter Mike Thomas
- Start date
Exciting development. Will certainly be interesting to see it unfold. Fingers crossed for 85% + of it being all good!
Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://news.vailresorts.com/corporate/vailresorts/resort-news/vail-resorts-stowe.htm
http://news.vailresorts.com/corporate/vailresorts/resort-news/vail-resorts-stowe.htm
I've worked for two companies in my life... Both have been bought out with CEO-types promising that "all will be better" and "new opportunities", etc.
As a rank-and-file employee, both times I was very suspicious and both times (within a year) pretty much every rank-and-file employee was wishing it hadn't happened.
I'll hope that Vail's acquisition will bring "good" (although I like Stowe "just the way it is", so I'm not sure what needs to be improved) but the pessimist and realist in me thinks otherwise.
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Read the posted announcement thru Epic an hour before the company sent me an email.
This has been obviously in the works for a while. Huge news for sure and interesting how it will change the ski resort landscape. As I said in our article, I don't see the Smugglers Notch announcement too far behind.
I have mixed feelings about this. I've been skiing Stowe since the mid 70's and it's one of my favorites in the east along with Sugarloaf. You certainly can't beat the town of Stowe for a pretty cool vibe. I've been involved in tech companies my entire career and have gone through numerous acquisitions. In my experience they never work out as planned and mostly for the worse. I'm hoping that this will turn out better.
If that happens will they connect the two?
^^^^ that would be HUGE!!!!!!! ............ but they are so diff........... kinda like the diff bet Alta and Sbird............. opposite vibes........
Love both mountains but aren't there already a lot of similarities?
Expensive lodging-check
Expensive lift tickets-check(Vail much higher per day, Stowe higher season pass)
Expensive on mountain food-check
Interesting base/off mountain restaurants and bars-check
Good ski shops-check
Variety of terrain-check, if they expand to Smuggs it will be huge and probably change the Smuggs feel a lot more than the Stowe feel.
Do you think new ownership of the mountain will change the feel of the town?
There was some interesting wording in Rob Katz email to employees.
This paragraph, which interested me because we'll be skiing Stowe in early April.
As we will not close on this acquisition until later this spring, it will be business as usual for the remainder of the ski season with no changes to any of Stowe’s lift ticket or season pass products at this time. We look forward to integrating the resort into our Epic Season Pass offering and other season pass products for the 2017-2018 winter season (subject to the acquisition closing) and plan to provide those details in March when our pass products for next season are announced.
This paragraph, which interested me because we'll be skiing Stowe in early April.
As we will not close on this acquisition until later this spring, it will be business as usual for the remainder of the ski season with no changes to any of Stowe’s lift ticket or season pass products at this time. We look forward to integrating the resort into our Epic Season Pass offering and other season pass products for the 2017-2018 winter season (subject to the acquisition closing) and plan to provide those details in March when our pass products for next season are announced.
I don't think it will change the feel of the town because Stowe as a town is well established and it's a year round destination with lot's to do.
Read the article and the last question posed. I'd respond by asking "Is the consumer being harmed?".
It's hard to see how, with the exception of not liking the idea that a previous owner could make more money selling than operating in its current environment. Vail is on an acquisition spree because it is well run and profitable rather than being a rich family charity or a collection of disjointed private investment assets.
There are major alternatives in every market Vail serves, usually within a relatively short distance, so it's hard to see how this is anti-competitive. It rather seems highly competitive in an industry full of dinosaurs.
I'm not a Vail customer, but that's only because there are better options for me in the Colorado ski market and I don't ski travel currently being in the middle of family life.
But I do like to hang at Vail spots in the summer, and it's hard to see how they do anything that makes that worse at Stowe. Which is a major point left off the 'check' boxes in the article: is there a summer season market that can leverage "beds on base" and on mountain assets because long term ROI growth in the VR model is about the second season?
Check.
According to the Vail press release the purchase did NOT include many of the lodges at the mountain and did also NOT include future real estate development sites. So maybe Vail will not be looking at dropping season pass prices and then making up the short fall with lodging visits and real estate sales.
I pray for the health of those who own SB, SB, Alta and DV and for anti-trust application at some point. The Borg's cost of capital is so low and travel growth so high there isn't much else standing in their way.
The most surprising thing to me here is that there isn't at least one other company following a similar strategy to Vail.
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Time for a Stowe version?
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awesome