This letter was sent to Vail Resorts, and shared with Pique.
It was a friend’s birthday yesterday (Monday, April 17). He drove up from the city to ski on his birthday, as he does every year. When we arrived on Blackcomb we were shocked to see the lineup for the Excalibur Gondola at both mid-station and in the village, and wondered why the Blackcomb Gondola was not running. We decided to have a coffee and take it up a bit later. The lineup only got longer.
Much to his disappointment, my friend decided to save the $169 it would have cost him to have three or four runs and return to Vancouver, however, there was no way to get back to the car in the upper parking lot without lining up in that giant lineup. Thankfully, a friend who also decided to give up on skiing that day was able to give us a ride.
The guest experience on a scale of one to 10 was -10. What kind of operation are you running? I know you’ve made your money for the season by selling a crap load of Epic Passes. But that doesn’t give you the right to shortchange your customers by shutting down more than half your upload capacity and not running Glacier Chair and not running 7th Heaven until 1 p.m. that day. There was a lot of standing in line and very little skiing.
I was very disappointed for my friend. You managed to ruin his birthday, and I’m probably done skiing for the season. I was looking forward to some good spring skiing on Blackcomb in the coming month, but with only a fraction of the lifts open, it’s not really worth my while. I’ve stood in line long enough this year.
I’m sure your excuse will be that you are unable to hire staff to run all the lifts, but that’s a tired, old ditty we’ve all heard before. If you can’t hire enough staff, you obviously have a problem with your business plan. I don’t know, but I’m just going out on a limb here with the suggestion that you might not be paying enough for people to feasibly afford to live and work in Whistler. This is a problem you need to resolve—yesterday.
With disgust,
