Ski Inc. 2020: Alterra Counters Vail Resorts; Mega-passes Transform the Landscape; the Industry Responds and Flourishes; for Skiing? a North American Renaissance. Cet article n’est pas disponible.Ski Inc. 2020: Alterra Counters Vail Resorts; Mega-passes Transform the Landscape; the Industry Responds and Flourishes; for Skiing? a North American Renaissance

"The ski world has been turned upside down."
Chris Diamond's first book, Ski Inc. , had just hit bookshelves in December 2016 when shock waves reverberated through the ski resort landscape. In early 2017, the Alterra Mountain Company emerged to challenge Vail Resorts' supremacy, eventually buying 15 resorts, partnering with another 25-plus, and launching the Ikon Pass to come with the Epic Pass. The story behind Alterra's rise is remarkable, as is Vail Resorts' counter-offensive in the form of its own buying spree, which most recently included the acquisition of the 17 ski areas of Peak Resorts.
Through countless interws, hundreds of sources, and deep firsthand experience, Diamond dissects this unprecedented upheaval, in which the business has been radically, disruptively, and yet positively transformed. " Ski Inc. 2020 accomplished in a matter of hours what I'd failed to do on my own in a decade: make sense of present-day resort headlines in the context of how we got here in the first place," says Gregg Blanchard, the senior vice president of Strategy for Inntopia.
When Diamond started this Ski Inc. 2020 sequel, he thought it would be primarily the story of how these "Big Two" resort companies suddenly came to control more than half of the U.S. ski resort business through their mega-passes, and what it means for skiers and snowboarders. But as he dug deeper, he discovered dynamic trajectories among the next three largest ski conglomerates (Boyne Resorts, POWDR and Peak Resorts, now part of Vail), plus ingenuity and innovation at a host of small- and medium-sized resorts, dozens of which are chronicled in the book. Besides the widespread success of value season passes, which trade early commitment for dramatically reduced pricing, resorts large and small have polished their operations. The success starts with passionate leadership and extends to every line item.

Chris Diamond is the award-winning author of the first Ski Inc., a resort consultant, and a veteran resort operator. He started his career as an assistant to the president of Killington in 1972, and was the president of Mount Snow, Vermont, from 1977 to 1994. From 1994 to 1996 he served as the vice president for Business Development and president of the Vermont resorts for S-K-I Ltd. He then spent 17 years at the helm of Steamboat Ski Resort before retiring in 2015. He is a past director and chairman of Colorado Ski Country USA and of the National Ski Areas Association, which presented him with its highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, in 2013. Chris, who was inducted into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame in 2017, lives in Steamboat Springs with his wife, Eileen.

Andy Bigford, who edited and collaborated in the writing of Ski Inc. 2020, has spent nearly 40 years in ski-related publishing, starting his career overseeing newspapers in Breckenridge and Aspen. He was the editor-in-chief and then publisher of SKI, and the general manager of Warren Miller Entertainment. He has written or edited four books, including Warren Miller's autobiography, Freedom Found.