![]() With Perisher already in its arsenal, Vail acquires Australian resorts Falls Creek and Hotham for a reported $124 million. The move comes as a shock to many skiers, particular Crested Butte locals who in previous decades prided themselves on not being Vail. Back home, one of the few local holdouts, Crested Butte, also a Triple Peaks property, is sold to Vail Resorts as part of the package. With record-setting revenues despite an industry-wide downturn in visitors, Vail blitzes the Northeast and Northwest, snatching up Vermont’s Okemo and Stowe Mountain Resorts, Washington’s Stevens Pass, and completes an agreement to operate New Hampshire’s Mount Sunapee in a deal with Triple Peaks. The purchase price was one of the largest ever for a mountain resort. Whistler Blackcomb: If Park City and Perisher were foreshocks, Vail’s purchase of the most-trafficked ski area in North America for $1.1 billion on August 8, 2016, might have broken the Richter scale. ( READ: How Rob Katz Became the Most Powerful Man in the Ski Industry) The global takeover-probably including one of those cool, holographic maps of the Earth sitting in CEO Rob Katz’ office-has commenced. By late 2016, Vail Resorts’ stock price hits $162 per share, nearly 250 percent above its pre-recession price 10 years earlier. Perisher: Six months later, Vail acquires the largest mountain resort in Australia for $135 million. ![]() It quickly merges Park City with Canyons Resort, acquired on a 50-year lease 16 months earlier, creating the largest ski resort in the U.S. Park City: Vail sends a tremor through the industry when it purchases Park City Mountain Resort for an estimated $182.5 million from Powdr Corp on September 11, 2014. 2013–16Ī section of the Northern Hemisphere is never enough, so Vail Resorts completes several new expansions: As it digs out of the financial hole, Vail expands to Lake Tahoe, where it buys resorts on the northwest end (Northstar) and southern end (Kirkwood) of the lake to go along with the aforementioned Heavenly. Similar to many of its peers, Vail was hit hard by the fallout of the 2008 economic recession, with plummeting occupancy rates and decreased customer spending dragging its stock price down 45 percent. Industry leaders call them foolish instead, they revolutionize the North American ski market. ![]() ![]() Now with five major resorts under its belt, Vail throws a knuckleball into the ski industry with the introduction of its “Epic Pass.” At $569, the annual pass gives holders an unlimited number of days at its quintet of ski areas. Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe, where musician Sonny Bono (yes, that one) died after hitting a tree in 1998, comes under the Vail Resorts umbrella for a cool $102 million. The Ottoman-er, Vail Resorts-Empire expands once again, this time outside of Colorado. The DOJ orders A-Basin be sold to a third party at the beginning of the year and it has been independent ever since. Justice Department argues it violates antitrust laws because Vail, whose properties accounted for 12 percent of all skier days in Colorado, would triple that number with the addition of all three resorts. The $310 million deal briefly includes Arapahoe Basin, but the U.S. Five years later, in an effort to begin building its empire and much to the chagrin of skiing purists in the Centennial State, the newly publicly traded Vail Resorts acquires Breckenridge and Keystone from Ralston Purina (yes, the pet food company). Because it can be hard to keep track of every Vail acquisition, we created this complete timeline to understand how Vail became the most ubiquitous brand in ski resort management: January 3, 1997Īfter its parent company, Gillett Holdings, went bankrupt six years earlier, private-equity firm Apollo Global acquires Vail in 1992. Snow in Vermont and Attitash in New Hampshire-meaning Epic Pass holders can now ski at nearly 80 resorts this season. Most recently, Vail acquired Peak Resorts, owner of 17 properties in the Midwest and Northeast-including Mt. Since the mid-1990s-and particularly in the past 10 years-Vail Resorts has acquired so many mountains-including Whistler, Park City, and Crested Butte, just to name a few-that some have even joked the Broomfield-based company might as well buy the rights to all North American snowfall, securing their grip on the ski industry and bringing them one step closer to total world domination. ![]() Through a series of acquisitions and leasing agreements over the past decade, Vail Resorts has grown from the owner of four of the state’s most popular mountains (Vail, Keystone, Breckenridge, and Beaver Creek) to a corporate behemoth with 37 properties across North America and Australia, and partnership agreements in Europe and Japan. Rob Katz Is the Most Powerful Man in the Ski Industry. ![]()
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