Vail Resorts, Inc. said the 2010-11 ski season has gotten off to a very strong start at its mountain resorts along Colorado’s Front Range and in the Lake Tahoe region, where it recently acquired a second ski area.
Season ticket sales are running 5% ahead of last year in units and 7% in terms of dollars, excluding the recently acquired Northstar-at-Tahoe resort, where season ticket sales are up 8% and 10% respectively.
The company said lodging bookings at its mountain resorts, which also include Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado and Heavenly near Lake Tahoe, are up in the single-digits in units and double-digits in dollars from the same period a year earlier.
The company said lodging bookings at its mountain resorts, which also include Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado and Heavenly near Lake Tahoe, are up in the single-digits in units and double-digits in dollars from the same period a year earlier.
Katz made the remarks while commenting on the company’s results for the company’s fiscal first quarter ended Oct. 31. Revenues at MTN’s Mountain Segment, which include resort but not lodging or real estate sales, rose 4.0% to $40.8 million during the quarter, led by 18.4% gain in dining revenue as its resorts booked more group and wedding parties.
That included retail/rental revenues of $22.1 million, up 2.4% at Specialty Sports Ventures, which operates approximately 145 rental/retail locations specializing in ski, snowboard, golf and cycling equipment. Vail Resort acquired the 30% of SSV it did not already own in April from the Gart family.
“Retail sales leading into the season have been very strong, especially at our Colorado front range and San Francisco Bay area locations,” CEO Rob Katz said of the company’s SSV unit. “The sales increases have been across all of our key product lines and were especially strong during the month of November. To top it off, we also have had outstanding snowfall so far at all of our resorts, enabling us to have 10 times as many runs open this Thanksgiving compared to last. While it is still early, these trends and indicators certainly are encouraging.”
Katz said revenue per available room rose 8% and occupancy 4.3% during the first quarter, indicating a continuation of trends first seen in the spring.
