The future of multi-resorts ski-passes

There's no question that even more than a great snow year, the flurry of multi-resorts pass visitors have been the subject of animated conversations and bitter resentment among locals, especially.

The real question we might ask, at a time when we're being hit daily with pleas for renewal, is whether that Epic and Ikon fever will last or will it just be “flash in the pan”?

One could speculate that after having “visited” many resorts this winters, a large number of skiers may have found that it costs money to travel from one place to the other, whether by car or plane and that it takes time to get to a new place and come back (make it two days in most cases).

Skiers would also have experienced that it cost even more to find accommodations, that finding food for one person, a family, or a group was never cheap in an unknown ski town, and finally that, unless one is the adventurous type, each new resort takes a lot of time to be explored, understood and start offering as much familiarity as the ski town people are used to.

Then, as resorts want to extract more money each year, their price increase far outpace inflation to the point where the benefits of these passes inevitably come in a collision course with their affordability.

It's true that these multi-use passes are no different than the 500 TV channels we have at our fingertips when we only use, in practice, the same 1 or 2, over and over...

Sure, it's quite likely that sale of these passes and the cross-visitations they engender won't drop like a rock next season, but the novelty will start to wear off and soon, the most adventurous of us may conclude: “been there – done that!”