The Great M&A Ski War

Alterra and Vail Resorts have bought up dozens of slopes to enhance their competing all-you-can-ski season tickets. How will the new business model weather the coming storm?

- Kyle Stock

Even among the world’s most polished ski resorts, Deer Valley—with its vast carpets of flawlessly groomed snow spread across four Utah peaks—was always conspicuously clubby. Skiers can pick up a free copy of the Wall Street Journal on their way to the fire, while instructors eat lunch in separate employee cafeterias, lest they mingle with the guests. “The idea was to replicate the service and experience of a five-star hotel,” says Bob Wheaton, who ran the resort for 22 years before stepping aside in January.

But when the lifts started cranking this season, things looked a little different. Among the affluent families were young couples and packs of Salt Lake City friends navigating the runs for the first time. The reason: Deer Valley had suddenly become a bulk-buy product. In 2017 a new conglomerate (later dubbed Alterra Mountain Co.) bought 11 of America’s most popular ski resorts and teamed with dozens more mountain owners to honor a single-season lift ticket called the Ikon Pass. Compared with buying a string of daily lift tickets for as much as $200 a pop, the Ikon Pass (which ranges from $599 to $899) can pay for itself in as few as three days. Only one other product is in direct competition with Ikon: The Epic Pass from Vail Resorts Inc. admits skiers to its aggressively expanding chain of 20 destinations including the company’s namesake ski area in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

Together, Alterra’s and Vail’s passes can be swiped at 58 North American resorts, as well as a handful of resorts in Oceania and Europe. The two competing conglomerates are trying to turn occasional skiers into frequent skiers and frequent skiers into serial skiers who incidentally buy a lot of midmountain beers and slopeside hotel rooms. Deer Valley and resorts like it have become a sort of research and development lab forecasting possible futures for the long-struggling ski industry.