Vail Resorts flawed reservations system

To cope with Covid-19, Vail Resorts (VR) decided to opt for a reservations system in order to limit the number of users on the mountain during each single day, based on its available uphill capacity, greatly reduced (from 75% to 30%, in most cases) through social distancing in the lines and on the lifts. 

This idea wasn’t selected by most other resorts and for some pretty obvious reasons that you’ll discover as you read. This reservations idea was the typical good idea that was not thought through at all, and as well all know, the devil always loves to hide inside the details! 

Back in August, I tried to understand the rules behind VR’s reservations program, but couldn’t make any sense of it. I emailed VR, asking them for clarification, and copied Mike Goar, the VP and General Manager of Park City Mountain (PCM). I never got any response from either party. Mid September, I watched a video in which Rob Katz VR’s CEO was supposed to explain his resorts confusing reservation system. This was fruitless, as he failed to explain anything. 

The day before PCM opened I tried to figure that system out and saw that I couldn’t make a reservation for the reminder of the month including, Friday November 20, the next day. The grid didn't allow reservations through December 7. So, I assumed that reservations were required for the core season only. Then I began booking reservations for 7 days from December 8 through December 13. 

So, on Friday, I showed up at PCM around 12:15 pm and was turned back as I was scanned in the line and told I had no reservation, so I went home, licked my wounds, tried to call Vail Resorts and was told by its voice mail message that there was too long a waiting line and got automatically disconnected. Great customer service! 

Not one to give up easily, I tried the Chat service and after waiting a good while was told that I would get a response in 233 minutes (translation: almost 4 hour!) I then sent an incendiary email to PCM's General Manager, in which I explained my experience for the day. He clarified some of the things I never understood in Vail Resorts’ res system, apologized for my frustration with the system. 

He told me that “PCM experienced a very high volume, which coupled with reduced capacity due to limited terrain makes it challenging to secure reservations this week. All of the safety protocols came on top of that, leading to these difficulties.” He also conveniently ignored my comments about Vail Resorts’ terrible customer service (phone and chat).

 After that needless torture, I began to understand how flawed VR’s reservations system was. What began as an original idea was terribly designed, poorly explained, not discussed thoroughly and obviously not tested either! The way the system is designed, folks can preempt most of the available space without using it (the system promotes tons of "no-shows"). 

Further, its “one-day unit” is senseless; Many locals ski for 1, 2 hours, half-day mostly, and yet, their reservation counts for a full day! Still, VR RFID system would allow for fractional time and optimize the number of users on the slopes. 

What I’d propose to fix would be both doable and simple: With 7 ski-hours in a day (9 am – 4 pm). It would be possible to reserve 2, 3 or 4 hours per day. 7 hours reserved would count for a day. Reservations should be canceled 24 hours in advance or else, they would be deemed no show if the skier doesn’t use them. 

The penalty for no-show could be one less day of floating reservation through the rest of the season. This said, I’m still very concerned that Vail Resorts and Park City Mountain are cheating people who have paid a lot of money for the passes by giving them only a fraction of the product promised. 

Refunds anyone?