The world’s largest ski resort operator, Vail Resorts, is reported to be planning to buy a second major Swiss ski resort, Crans Montana.
Vail Resorts already own more than 40 ski areas, including many well known US resorts, Whistler Blackcomb in Canada, about half of Australia’s resorts including largest Perisher and Switzerland’s Andermatt from which it bought a 55% share from an Egyptian billionaire.
In this case Swiss newspaper Blick says it’s a Czech billionaire, Radovan Vitek, who is behind the Crans Montana deal and that an announcement is likely later this month. The newspaper reports that the sale of the ski lifts is agreed but that other details remain outstanding. Blick says they got their information from another publication, “Le Temps”, who in turn say their sources are “informants” with no official confirmation yet from Crans Montana, nor Vail.
Crans-Montana is one of Switzerland and the world’s leading resorts and will host the World Alpine Skiing Championships in 2027.
Vail Resorts’ highly successful business model is based on advance sales of Epic Pass season pass which gives holders access to all of its ski areas and, on more limited terms, numerous partner resorts. It sells large numbers of these passes before the season begins bringing in huge sums regardless of how the weather turns out in individual resorts in its portfolio once winter begins. It thus circumvents the traditional key problem of operating individual ski resorts, a poor snow winter. Of course the company also sells many associated products and services to Epic Pass holders.
The company just reported sales of $2.89 billion and net profit of $268 million for the 2022/2023 fiscal year ended July 31.
Image top credit: Crans-Montana, Pat Burgener, Nico Vuignier, Ruedi Fluck
