Vail Resorts

Vail Resorts, Inc. is an American mountain resort company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The company is divided into three divisions. The mountain segment owns and operates 42 mountain resorts in four countries. Vail Resorts Hospitality owns or manages hotels, lodging, condominiums, and golf courses, and the Vail Resorts Development Company oversees property development and real estate holdings.

History
Vail Resorts was founded as Vail Associates Ltd. by Pete Seibert and Earl Eaton in the early 1960s. Eaton, a lifelong resident, led Siebert (a former WWII 10th Mountain Division ski trooper) to the area in March 1957. They both became ski patrol guides at Aspen, Colorado, when they shared their dream of finding the "next great ski mountain." Siebert set off to secure financing, and Eaton engineered the early lifts. Their Vail ski resort opened in 1962. George N. Gillett Jr. purchased Vail Associates in 1985. Vail Associates changed its name to Vail Resorts and went public in 1997 after Gillett Holdings went bankrupt. Apollo Management, headed by Leon Black, bought the company out of bankruptcy and took Vail Resorts public, controlling Vail Resorts until 2003, when Apollo divested itself of controlling interest. The skating rink at Beaver Creek, Colorado, was named the Black Family Skating Rink after Leon Black.

Rob Katz, a former executive at Apollo, ran Vail Resorts as CEO until November 2021, when he was appointed executive chairperson of the board. Kirsten Lynch, the company's former chief marketing officer, then took over as CEO.

In June 2024, Vail Resorts reported lower-than-expected revenue during the February-April quarter due to a significantly warmer-than-anticipated winter across western North American resorts, with snowfall 28% lower than average. The company generated $1.28 billion in revenue during the quarter despite the stabilizing effect of its Epic Pass program, which allows customers to purchase a season pass for its North American resorts at a significant upfront cost. However, Vail's stock price has declined by 50% since its October 2021 peak of $360. While this past winter was one of the warmest on record for the company, concerns exist that future winters may even be warmer.

Criticism
Some of Vail Resort's acquisitions have fueled anger among local residents. Locals complain that the Vail's pass structure caters to wealthy international pass holders and reduces access to nearby residents; additionally, residents have seen their cost-of-living increase following Vail's takeovers.

RockResorts
In 2001, Vail Resorts acquired the luxury hotel chain RockResorts, contributing substantially to its brand recognition. RockResorts was named after its original owners, the Rockefeller Family. As of January 2017, the properties include:

Subsidiaries and affiliates
All of the company's retail operations are run by a smaller company, [Vail Resorts Retail, VRR], of which Vail owns 70%. The owners of the other 30% are the Gart Brothers, specifically Tom Gart, Ken Gart, and John Gart. The Gart family has been in the sporting goods business for three generations and was the former owner of Gart Sports, a large chain of sporting goods stores in the western US. Gart Sports was sold by the Gart family in the 1990s and then recently sold again to Sports Authority, which discontinued the use of the Gart Sports name in 2006. In 2010, Vail completed the buyout of the Specialty Sports Venture brand and is now the 100% owner of all SSV operations. In addition to all of the ski shops in the Vail Resorts portfolio of ski areas, the SSV chain of stores includes Bicycle Village in Denver, Colorado Ski & Golf, Boulder Ski Deals, Aspen Sports, Telluride Sports, and Mountain Sports Outlet in Summit County and Glenwood Springs and many others. SSV is reportedly the largest Trek bicycle dealer in the world.

Vail Resorts also owns just over 50% of Slifer Smith and Frampton (SSF), the largest real estate brokerage company in the Vail region, controlling over 70% of the real estate transactions in the market. Slifer, Smith, and Frampton were called Slifer, Smith, and Frampton/Vail Associates Real Estate, but they dropped the "Vail Associates" name in 2003. The founders of SSF are Rod Slifer, a former ski instructor who was recently the mayor of the Town of Vail, and Mark Smith, a real estate broker/turned developer who currently also runs East West Partners with Harry Frampton, who was the former President of Vail Associates and currently owns East West Partners. East West Partners has built most of the large buildings that make up the Beaver Creek Village, including the Marketplace Building, Village Hall, and One Beaver Creek. This is separate from East West Resorts, a separate property management group.

Vail Resorts Development Company (VRDC) is the wholly-owned real estate development company that Vail Resorts uses to develop all of its company-owned real estate, other than the projects East West Partners develops. VRDC developed Bachelor's Gulch, one of the business's most upscale ski-in/ski-out resorts, with its own Ritz Carlton and just over 100 slopeside mansions. President Gerald Ford kept his ski house between Beaver Creek and Bachelor's Gulch in the Strawberry Park section of Beaver Creek. Arrowhead is the third "peak" in the heavily promoted "village to village ski experience" in which you can ski from Beaver Creek to Bachelor's Gulch to Arrowhead and back again. Arrowhead was a separate ski area unrelated to Beaver Creek for years before Vail Associates finally bought them in the early 1990s. VRDC also developed the "club" division of Vail Resorts, including the Beaver Creek Club, the Arrowhead Alpine Club, and the Game Creek Club (in Vail). VRDC also developed Red Sky Ranch in Wolcott (approximate 10 mi west of Beaver Creek), which includes two golf courses and many million dollar golf course homes. These clubs are now operated by the "Mountain Division" of Vail Resorts.

List of resorts
Vail Resorts operates 42 ski resorts in the United States, Canada, Australia and Switzerland including, notably, the Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Crested Butte ski areas in Colorado, and Northstar California, Kirkwood Mountain Resort, and Heavenly Mountain Resort on the California-Nevada border. In British Columbia, Canada, they also acquired the largest ski resort in North America: Whistler Blackcomb. Vail Resorts offers a variety of multi-resort season passes under the Epic Pass program. The Epic Pass also has partnerships that allow access to several other resorts in the US, Canada, Japan, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Vail Resorts acquired the Grand Teton Lodge Company within the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming in 1999. The GTLC properties include the Jenny Lake Lodge, Jackson Lake Lodge, and Colter Bay Village.