Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Save a Ski Town

outsideonline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 298 posts

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#251

Post by boringg »

topkai22 wrote: post #159
boringg wrote: post #50

One of the biggest problems that is hitting ski towns is the hyper cheap season passes that everyone buys. The model has created a huge surge of demand for people to go skiing in winter which has put pressure on the local ski towns (more short term rental demands, second home buyers) and the resources at ski mountains (aka the insane lines on a good ski day now). It's interesting because it has allowed a lot more peo…

Interesting theory, but overall skier visits are at best flat for the last 20 years (see https://www.statista.com/statistics/206544/estimated-number-... . Also see the briefings I get at ski instructor meetings every year.) I guess it could mean that the resorts in the Ikon/Epic networks are experiencing these problems while out of network locations are seeing slumping business (which does anecdotally appears true) b…

I think what that broad set of data is a poor marker as its opaque in its accuracy and has no ability to drill down further into the data. It is a good starter point - and I do appreciate a counter information to my theory.

1. Those are gross volume but the distribution of visits per location has changed dramatically as a result of the Ikon and Epic passes - ie local demand pressure in certain localities. 2. What is the distribution of one time buyers versus season pass holders? 3. International vs domestic? 4. Over that time period how many people have actually left ski resorts and started to backcountry ski instead (a not insignificant amount) - which is demand that would be unaccounted for. 5. The other challenge with skiing is it is highly weather dependent - so a bad snow year will limit the amount of visits. I imagine if you were to divy up this plot by states - there would be a strong correlation with big snow years in California and large movements in the numbers merely as a function of scale.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#252

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

scythe wrote: post #233
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I generally support housing construction wherever it's fiscally sound. TFA describes a town where (a) construction is limited by forces beyond the town's control (geography, federal land ownership) and (b) construction (at least of certain kinds of housing) is prevented by existing residents who vote against it. The state of housing construction in Crested Butte does not sound as if it is governed by any sort of no…

So this is a pretty good example of a non-constructive response created by polarization. Obviously we are only interested in the returns to modifying (b) under the constraints of (a). Obviously markets can price this kind of thing. But no, let's obsess over any technicality in a critique of our ideology (in your case, the deregulation position) until the Sun explodes.

> Obviously markets can price this kind of thing.

The markets have priced this kind of thing. TFA is about the result.

You could argue that the situation described in TFA is contigent or temporary or something like that, and to the extent that everything about any town fits that description, sure, you're right. But it's no help to anyone to say "oh, this situation will be different in 50 years anyway".

You could (and probably would) argue that the problems described in TFA arise from the political control exerted by local voters to limit housing styles and availability, and not "the market". That's certainly true to some extent, but there's no way out of that unless you propose to strip towns of political systems entirely - perhaps some libertarian scenario in which ownership is everything and no political process can prevent an owner from using something unless it causes harm to others, harm defined, of course, by the owner or the owner's political and economic allies. That's a debate I no longer get into.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#253

Post by pharmakom »

refurb wrote: post #249
space_fountain wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is that while maybe wages will be pushed up a bit, eventually the equilibrium is still a situation we won't like. Like long commutes and bad living situations.

But is it a bad equilibrium? If someone is willing to trade the time and cost of a long commute, can’t we trust that they decided it’s worth it? I keep hearing how we need to make the Bay Area affordable, but I’m also thinking “price is a signal” and people deciding to live elsewhere is exactly what we want . I spent time in a developing country and the government is struggling to creating new economic centers but fa…

Perhaps a bad example of a free market in action, what with the rigid zoning laws and regressive tax incentives.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#254

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

asdff wrote: post #169
fragmede wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By bringing down the price of a 2nd home in a mountain resort town, the locals can also more easily afford to live in one. That is, if it were easy to magically create more mountain towns, without other effects on supply and demand.

Even if you owned the land already, price of construction being what it is in the western US, the home will be several hundred thousand dollars. That's out of reach to a lift operator making $12/hr.

... which of course shows another, arguably deeper, aspect of the problem: the general share of GDP that goes to labor, particularly lower paid labor, and how that compares with increases in the cost of fundamental things like housing. Somehow, we've ended up with an economy and a culture where someone can work 40 hours a week but not be paid enough to afford a lot of what our culture also assumes to be basic. This isn't an accident, and has effects way beyond just mountain resort towns, though the effects are particularly acute and visible in such places.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#255

Post by boringg »

3finmunchousen wrote: post #119
boringg wrote: post #50

One of the biggest problems that is hitting ski towns is the hyper cheap season passes that everyone buys. The model has created a huge surge of demand for people to go skiing in winter which has put pressure on the local ski towns (more short term rental demands, second home buyers) and the resources at ski mountains (aka the insane lines on a good ski day now). It's interesting because it has allowed a lot more peo…

Been looking through the Vail annual reports. In FY 2010 Season/Epic passes were 35% of ticket revenue, FY 2019 it was 47%, FY 2021 61%. I think your theory has legs.

Thanks. I've been a skier for a long time and have a market / data mindset and I have been watching the changes on ski mountains/communities over that time.

For me personally the hyper cheap passes have a had a positive effect in getting people into skiing that wouldn't be able to afford the commitment. It has, unfortunately, lowered the quality of skiing as on good weather conditions the volume of runs you can get / time spent in line has dropped significantly. That and the quality of snow decreases (ie more people chew up the snow faster). That is admittedly only a concern for skiers/snowboarders who are at a certain level of ability to take advantage of those conditions (most people don't care).

I think one of the unintended consequences of the ski industry doing this is that they have (and probably don't really care) made it skiing worse for locals (via higher housing costs, more competition for resources (snow, food), congestion. Maybe it has helped the local business owner, and maybe there are more jobs but I would wager the jobs are not career jobs but more like dead end jobs. It is an age-old problem between corporate ownership of ski mountains and crusty locals -- the power dynamics lie in the favor of the corporates.

The model plays well for the traveling skier type who is willing to travel and stay on mountain accommodation. They lower the costs of acquisition and recoupe on spend on site. To everyones point - the disney model / theme park model.

Theres lots more to it - but probably as far as I am willing to think about it at this point :)

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#256

Post by vwcx »

ghaff wrote: post #238
kortilla wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in the Rockies in the Wyoming/Montana area. There is absolutely enough open mountain space to open more resorts. There are ski resorts open now that are not doing that well financially. The problem is not the mountain side ski hills, it’s access to the flow of rich people. Ski resorts 2 hours from the Bozeman airport struggle because that’s too inconvenient. The ski towns that suffer from these problems are…

I don't disagree with any of that. Though I'd point out that just because there's lots of open mountain space doesn't mean it would be anything like straightforward to get the permits to develop and operate a destination ski resort there. But, as you say, a lot of destination ski resorts don't even really have an associated town at all or they have a somewhat distributed sprawl of related properties and they're incon…

Not to mention the quality of the attraction itself -- there are plenty of B-level Colorado "resorts" that most upper middle class won't bat an eyelash at because the vert/terrain/natural snowpack just isn't as good as what you'd get in, say, Breck.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#257

Post by ghaff »

sokoloff wrote: post #221
lotsofpulp wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supreme Court denied hearing New Hampshire v Massachusetts on Jun 28, 2021, and basically told individual taxpayers to fight being taxes by states they have not set foot in. I know quite a few people who have not stepped foot in NY state for nearly 2 years now and have been paying NY state income taxes the whole time. https://www.sullivanlaw.com/news-The-Supreme-Court-Denies-Co...

In both of those cases, that income has substantial nexus in the state, though, with the employer generally being located in the taxing state.

I suspect we haven't heard the last of these cases though.

As I understand the NH and MA case, this is about continuing to collect state income tax from NH residents who are no longer commuting. Presumably, it does not apply to remote NH residents who never commuted to a MA location. (The situation of course gets even more complicated when a NH resident is remote to a company that has offices in many states. Why would MA have any particular right to state income tax just because an MA office is closer?)

States are getting very grabby in this regard though. Quite a few are going after business travelers who may have spent as little as a day in the state.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#258

Post by nitrogen »

lmm wrote: post #197
nitrogen wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core tenet of democracy is that local inhabitants make local decisions. Doing otherwise is... I don't know what, but it's anti-democratic. If a small mountain town doesn't want outside investors to blow up the place, they have the right to make that choice.

A second-home-owner who spends a few days a year in town is a "local inhabitant" but someone who commutes there every day because they can't afford the rent in town isn't? That doesn't seem very democratic to me.

No, if you don't live somewhere you don't live there.

Re: How to Save a Ski Town

#260

Post by cjohnson318 »

masklinn wrote: post #184
cjohnson318 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That there's going to be shorter seasons, and the snow line is going to move up. This is already starting to happen.

It’s been happening for a while really. In europe, low-altitude ski resorts have been dying for a while and had to diversify into non-skiing activities (which also alters the busy season as that’s more of a summer thing), and middle-altitude resorts are starting to get hit. Only the wealthiest stations have the means to cover the entire thing in artificial snow (some resorts are already 80% artificial snow at times)…

Thank you for that context. I didn't know that about European resorts.
Post reply on HN