Bob’s Bits for May 2025

Happy Spring! Most of you have concluded the ski season, but the standard late-season ski areas are still turning bullwheels. The Kottke Report notes 61.5 million skier visits, the second most on record. Congrats to all for the job well done this season.

When I heard the good news on the skier visit metric, I wondered how the upcoming season would play out, given the uncertainty on the economic front. Travel is currently taking a substantial hit. Will this continue until next season? Consumer confidence keeps sliding south. Travel patterns and consumer confidence can be negative for the ski season, especially for destination ski areas. So, I thought I’d do a bit of testing.

 In the May newsletter, a survey asked readers to rate their outlook for the upcoming season. I hope those who receive the newsletter click one of the boxes and share your outlook. I will publish the results in the June Newsletter. I realize this is not a scientific study; I am just taking the temperature of ski areas given the mix of positive and uncertain factors.

 This May Steep Newsletter shares some interesting and exciting information.

 SmartMountain has worked with an existing client's risk manager to develop an automated Workers’ Comp claim management system and waiver management system to interface with the incident management function in SmartMountain. Check out the news in this edition of the newsletter.

 Also, MountainOffice made a big splash at InterAlpin by announcing its planning feature for work order functionality, enabling ski areas to plan their summer maintenance graphically with start and end dates.

I encourage all ski areas to be thinking of next season now. Don’t kick the can down the road and minimize the fall-to-winter frenzy.