Yeah they live in Eagle/Gypsum/Dotsero/Red Cliff and Leadville... Vail is saying not good enough fire anyone whose been here 15+ years and hire more Brazilian college students, sweeten the pot by allowing us to own their housing, and then let us turn that housing into a giant hotel or whatever a decade down the line after the employee housing becomes too gross to live in due to our lack of upkeep.
These towns are not self-sustaining economies and will never be.
Vail, the town, didn't even exist until 1966. It was built out to be pretty much exactly what it has become. Without the resort(s), the towns Will mentioned would be different also, Red Cliff would probably be as much a ghost town as the one at the bridge on the way in. But cue the influx of many Billions of dollars and you get a much different community and economy.
And, IMO most impactful, VR went public in the early 00's, and then they had to answer to shareholders and primary focus to shareholder value. Two big things from that:
- Multi-resort passes (locking in revenue and generating cash flow in what are normally 'dead' months and quarters for ski area operators. They started in the late 90's but kicked into high gear as VA/VR consolidated resorts and their competition at Alterra, ASC, etc did, also)
- M&A (have to show constant growth to wall street, and inorganic growth was easy to come by in their growth period) - snapping up resorts, real estate and retail outlets for that 'vertically integrated' operation that the street generally wants to see
Both of these (and a myriad of other things) constrain operations budgets, and sadly, labor is a lever they can pull (or shift to J-1 programs) relatively easily since people want to live and work there for the most part. Rinse and repeat.
even Deloitte consultants are like
Hey now - I (used to) resemble that remark, but yeah...you wouldn't have a consultancy for long if you took that level of margin.
can you imagine just the parking lot for a complex that big fitting on that lot.
