Vail Resorts facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Vail Resorts

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: MTN Russell 1000 Component
Founded	1997
Headquarters	Broomfield, Colorado, USA
Key people	Robert A. Katz, CEO
Revenue	US$2.271 Billion (2019)
Net income	US$301.2 Million (2019)
Number of employees	20,150

Vail Resorts, Inc. is an American mountain resort company. The company is divided into three divisions. The mountain segment owns and operates 37 mountain resorts in three countries, Vail Resorts Hospitality owns or manages hotels, lodging, condominiums and golf courses, and the Vail Resorts Development Company oversees property development and real estate holdings. The company trades on the New York Stock Exchange, symbol MTN. The company is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado.

History

Vail Resorts was founded as Vail Associates Ltd. by Pete Seibert (former WWII 10th Mountain Division ski trooper) and Earl Eaton in the early 1960s. Earl and Peter were both ski patrol guides at Aspen, Colorado when they shared their dream of finding the "next great ski mountain". Earl, a lifelong resident and son of pioneer families in the area led Peter to the area in March 1957. Peter set off to secure financing and Earl engineered the early lifts. The ski resort was founded and it opened in 1962. George N. Gillett Jr. purchased Vail Associates in 1985. Vail Associates changed its name to Vail Resorts and went public in 1997 after Gillett Holdings (owned by George N. Gillett Jr.) went bankrupt. Apollo Management, headed by Leon Black, bought the company out of bankruptcy and took Vail Resorts public, controlling Vail Resorts through its growth until around 2003, when Apollo divested themselves of the controlling interest.

Former Apollo executive, Rob Katz, currently runs the company. The skating rink at Beaver Creek, Colorado was named the Black Family Skating Rink after Leon Black.

RockResorts

In 2001, Vail Resorts acquired the renowned luxury hotel chain RockResorts, which contributed substantially to their brand recognition. RockResorts (with the second "R" now capitalized) was named for its original owners, the Rockefeller Family. As of January 2017, the properties include:

The Pines Lodge at Beaver Creek, CO
The Lodge at Vail, CO
The Osprey at Beaver Creek, CO
The Arrabelle at Vail Square, CO
One Ski Hill Place at Breckenridge Ski Resort
The Grand Summit Hotel in Park City Utah

Subsidiaries and affiliates

All of the company's retail operations are run by a smaller company, [Vail Resorts Retail, VRR], of which Vail owns 70%. The owners of the other 30% are the Gart Brothers, specifically Tom Gart, Ken Gart and John Gart. The Gart family have been in the sporting goods business for 3 generations and were the former owners of Gart Sports, the large chain of sporting goods stores in the western US. Gart Sports was sold by the Gart family in the 1990s and then recently sold again to Sports Authority, which discontinued the use of the Gart Sports name in 2006. In 2010, Vail completed the buyout of the Specialty Sports Venture brand and is now the 100% owner of all SSV operations. In addition to all of the ski shops in the Vail Resorts portfolio of ski areas, the SSV chain of stores includes Bicycle Village in Denver, Colorado Ski & Golf, Boulder Ski Deals, Aspen Sports, Telluride Sports and Mountain Sports Outlet in Summit County and Glenwood Springs and many others. SSV is reportedly the largest Trek bicycles dealer in the world.

Vail Resorts also owns just over 50% of Slifer Smith and Frampton (SSF), the largest real estate brokerage company in the Vail region, controlling over 70% of the real estate transactions in the market. Slifer, Smith and Frampton was called Slifer, Smith and Frampton/Vail Associates Real Estate, but they dropped the "Vail Associates" name in 2003. The founders of SSF are Rod Slifer, a former ski instructor who was recently the mayor of the Town of Vail, Mark Smith, a real estate broker/turned developer who currently also runs East West Partners with Harry Frampton, who was the former President of Vail Associates and currently owns East West Partners. East West Partners has built most of the large building that make up the Beaver Creek Village, including the Marketplace Building, Village Hall and One Beaver Creek. Not to be confused with East West Resorts, a separate property Management Group.

Vail Resorts Development Company (VRDC) is the wholly owned real estate development company that Vail Resorts uses to develop all of its company-owned real estate, other than the projects that East West Partners develops. VRDC developed Bachelor's Gulch, one of the most upscale, ski-in/ski-out resorts in the business with its own Ritz Carlton and just over 100 slopeside mansions. President Gerald Ford kept his ski house in the Strawberry Park section of Beaver Creek, which is between Beaver Creek and Bachelor's Gulch. Arrowhead is the third "peak" in the heavily promoted "village to village ski experience" in which you can ski from Beaver Creek to Bachelor's Gulch to Arrowhead and back again. Arrowhead was a separate ski area unrelated to Beaver Creek for years before they were finally bought by Vail Associates in the early 1990s. VRDC also developed "club" division of Vail Resorts, including the Beaver Creek Club, the Arrowhead Alpine Club, and Game Creek Club (in Vail). VRDC also developed Red Sky Ranch in Wolcott (approximate 10 miles (16 km) west of Beaver Creek), which includes two golf courses and many million dollar golf course homes. All of these clubs are now operated by the "Mountain Division" of Vail Resorts.

List of resorts

Vail Resorts operate 37 ski resorts in the United States, Canada and Australia. Most notably the Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Crested Butte ski areas in Colorado, Northstar California, Kirkwood Mountain Resort, and Heavenly Mountain Resort on the California-Nevada border. They also aquired the largest ski resort in North America: Whistler Blackcomb, located in British Columbia, Canada. Vail Resorts offers a variety of multi-resort season passes under the Epic Pass program. The Epic Pass also has partnerships that allows access to several other resorts in the US, Canada, Japan, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Vail Resorts acquired the Grand Teton Lodge Company within the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming in 1999. The GTLC properties include the Jenny Lake Lodge, Jackson Lake Lodge, and Colter Bay Village.