If you’ve lived in Bend for more than a year or two, you’ve probably had one of those days when you head up to Bachelor hoping for 6-8 inches of untracked powder only to find that the rain in town translates to rain on the mountain. And unless you’re a season pass holder, you’ve either outright asked or wondered why you couldn’t get a refund.
This year it’s going to be a little different on our local ski hill according to Mt. Bachelor officials who announced their new pricing structure for next year. And while the mountain won’t be giving out refunds, it has announced a radical and, from what we can tell, unprecedented, tiered pricing structure for daily lift tickets this coming season. This winter, guests will pay on a sliding scale depending on the weather and lift operations. On the worst of non-holidays, Bachelor will charge guests $49 to ski or ride. Average days will be $59 and optimal conditions with full lift operations will be $69.
The new pricing is designed to pair the cost of skiing with the conditions, which can be widely variable at Bachelor, said Alex Kaufman, marketing director.
“If it’s ugly, it’s going to be the cheap rate. If it’s an average day, it’s going to be the middle rate. If it’s a bomber day, it’s the high rate. We’re trying to match the number to the experience,” Kaufman said.
Other major changes in store for next year include a long-overdue pass multi-day pass that’s available to locals.
The 12-day pass (holiday blackouts) will go for $399, putting the daily lift cost at roughly $33 – or a $26 savings.
Those who plan to ski less than 10 days, but still want to see some savings, will be able to buy a “Club Card” for $29 that is good for $49 tickets daily and $59 lifties on holidays. Also Bachelor is also allowing people to spread the cost of daily and 12-day passes out over several months with a summer payment that will be available today through Aug. 15.
While season pass rates will remain the same, the mountain is doing away with its free skiing for seniors program that gave no-cost daily lift tickets to skiers and riders over 70. This year, seniors will pay the youth rate for daily tickets or be able to purchase full-season passes for $249.
Kaufman said the mountain is prepared to take some heat for the switch, but was left with little choice given the growth of the senior skiing market. Last year, skiers over 70 accounted for roughly ten percent of Bachelor’s total visits – up from just one or two percent half a decade ago when the free-ski program was instituted.
“People would prefer not to pay for skiing, we’re aware of that,” Kaufman said about the criticism he expects over the change.
But he said the growth in the over-70 demo made the program unsustainable.
“Bend is a mecca for a lot of these (active retirees) and it’s great. But as it’s grown to 10 percent of our business it’s not fair to the rest of our guests…Everybody takes up a spot in the lift line, everybody takes up a spot in the ticket line and in the lodge.”
Asked if guests could expect some changes in operational strategies based on the tiered pricing, Kaufman said he didn’t think so.
He said the mountain will get as many lifts open on as many days as it can to maximize its revenue. He added that the staff planned to take a conservative approach when it came to labeling conditions as poor or average. Managers, he said, would try more often than not to error on the side of the guest.
“Our goal is to over-deliver on this as much as possible,” Kaufman said. “We’d much rather price on the conservative side.”
In terms of the actual decision, Kaufman said the staff has developed a basic scoring matrix for lift operations and weather. The total score will determine whether it’s poor, average, or good day. The staff will try to make that determination by 3 p.m. for the next day based on the weather forecast, but will reserve the right to up or downgrade the rating based on the actual conditions the following day.
“We know we need to be transparent on how we come up with that,” Kaufman said.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.
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I dunno….Everytime I see Powder Corp roll up to the Bend Airport in thier $40 million Gulfstream jet ferrying all but two corporate passengers it really just sours me despite any efforts on thier part to be more local friendly with ticket prices.
Maybe Les Schwabe will follow suit and charge more for concerts on sunny days.
This plan won’t work for the simple reason that it is impossible to predict the weather in the Cascades. You can’t predict today what it’ll be like tomorrow, and you can’t predict in the morning what it’ll be like at noon.
Who cares what they roll up in they still have to make money just like anyone else out there. Buy a pass and you wont have to worry about that.
Geez, people. It’s never enough.
Clairvoyant, this will work…they don’t need to predict. According to the plan, all they have to do is look out the window or go stand at the base of Pine Marten to determine the conditions on which to base that day’s pricing. The rates will be based on what the weather is actually like that morning.
And Berr – music sounds the same whether the sun’s out, it’s dark or the skies are cloudy. There is, however, a large difference between skiing in sunny calm conditions and in snowy, 60 mph winds.
This new pricing structure sounds like it is being “innovated” by some laid-off ‘fish-out-of-water’ Wall Street MBA, the sort who brought us the magical world of CDS, CDOs, ABS, MBOs, MBSs, etc. What’s the next step… slicing the skiing day into 20 minute tranches and selling rights to cut the lift lines for another premium upgrade rate while the bad rides become securitized ‘toxic waste’, get a Triple-A rating and are sold off to the unwary flatlanders?
I’m thinking that Powder Corp should be investigating the profit potential of surgically inserting self-depreciating evergreen-funded RFIDs into the gluteals of their best customers. This would give a whole new meaning to “taking it out of their hides”. The new herd could congregate in a rump-us room setting mid-mountain and compare notes on how their TARP and TALF holdings are appreciating as their local unreal estate unravels. Spiritualists could seek balance, the unbalanced could seek the pistes and a future can be conjured with complete ungravity.
I find these prices almost too ridiculous to comment on. Come on….give me a break, $49 to ski on a bad day. (and I thought Pape was bad) I have skied very little now for a number of years due to the outrageous prices charged to local residents who have supported this mt for decades. I actually moved to this town from the beach in Kona to ski more often. oh well. At least there is Hoodoo!
These guys from Powder Corp (who lied to us all before they were allowed to buy it) just don’t seem to get it. Or do they get it and just not care what Bend
working families can afford to pay?
Anyways, I don’t care what gimmick they are trying next season, I will continue to ski very little on the mt which I moved here for.
who says what a bad day is?
chef dave, first off, their jet is no where near $40 million, second, do you expect them to drive to Utah where their company is based out of? Mt. Bachelor has the reputation of being one of the top resorts in the Pacific NW, and with that comes the ability to charge what they charge for a lift ticket. it’s the same as the golf courses in the Central Oregon area who charge upwards of $80 for 18 holes…it’s a golf mecca, thus, prices are increased. all in all, Powdr Corp has done a good job in lowering the prices for locals, compared to Mt. Bachelor Group (Pape’s). Now, in regards to this slider scale scheme they’ve come up with…my definition of a 5-6 day would be around 6-12 inches of freshies and dumping snow, basically an epic powder day…their definition seems to be an icy hardpacked groomer day, which in my mind is a horrible day…as clairvoyant said, it’s impossible to figure out what the weather will be at bachelor on any given day at any given time, so i don’t believe this system will work how they have designed it to
That’s it??!!…TSW rolls out the local media response juggernaut and there’s only 3 comments??!!
Only the severely addicted will pay $49 for a day of skiing/boarding in this economy. $29, well, that might draw some more people.
I love that they are trying to move in a positive direction to please their customer base. The number one thing I hear when people complain about a day on Mt Bachelor is “it wasn’t worth it” However, this does not just refer to money. It also refers to a waste of time and effort. So, discounts for poor weather are a great step in the right direction but we also need the chairs to keep moving and the slopes to be well groomed, etc. Also, I agree w/Clairvoyant… It’s going to be an issue trying to predict conditions as they change so suddenly. What might work better is someone handing out vouchers for the restaurant/bar when the chairs are down, or stamping tickets with an extra ‘free day’ when we get rained out. I honestly don’t see why they have a problem giving refunds/partial refunds for horrible conditions… It’s easy to determine who’s taking advantage and who’s sincere by scanning the ticket and seeing how many runs they did before they asked for a refund. Movie theaters give refunds when people walk out of a bad movie early. Restaurants remove charges when the diner doesn’t like something. What’s the difference?
Thanks for all the feedback ya’ll. It surely is new and will take time to fine tune. Here’s the link to the lift tickets page that lays out how we intend to judge the following day. At the Mt B Town Hall there was a standing ovation in regards to our accuracy and truthfulness in reporting mountain conditions that we enacted last year. This effort is an extension of that.
http://www.mtbachelor.com/winter/tickets/lift_tickets/index.html
I can’t say it’s going to be the best thing since sliced bread. In fact, there’s surely going to be a day or two a month where the rate setting is off by $10 one way or the other. That being said, we’re excited by the idea of charging based more on what a day offers instead of an arbitrary number.
Resorts across the country charging between $50 and $100 for their daily lift tickets (regardless of the day) are going to be watching this closely. It could change the math for how the ski industry charges for skiing. Or not. We’ll see.
With our adverse weather, visibility impacts, and overtly candid snow reporting (due to our guests in a different climate 30 mins away), Mt B is a natural place to start this. We can offer 3600 glorious acres, or 600 tough ones depending on the day. We think that’s worth having an adjustable price.
We know we need to over deliver to have this work. We aim to have $49 days where we get more terrain open. Of course, the is mostly irrelevant to the season pass, 12-day, club card, multiday, lodging partner, etc guest. Just the folks walking up to the window and this year, paying for what they will have access to.
Feel free to contact me first initial last name @mtbachelor.com with questions or concerns, I’m sure I share a few of those questions or concerns. 🙂
I agree with jomamame – I think that MTB should think about giving away at least a points or half-day pass to full-day ticketholders when conditions significantly deteriorate during the day.
I think that the new MTB policy is creative and innovative – the people who I think will benefit are locals or near-locals (Portland / Valley residents) who spontaneously decide to spend a day or weekend skiing and end up unlucky in terms of weather. I think that forms a decent portion of Bachelor’s clientele – maybe Kaufman can comment on this.
If you come to Bachelor on a planned ski vacation from somewhere farther away, you’re pretty much stuck with the days you picked and I’m not sure how to help folks like that.
Overall I think Bachelor is a great mountain for locals, particularly if you have a season pass. I’ve gone up countless times when the ski report isn’t ideal just to take a few runs and try it out, and sometimes you find it’s no fun and sometimes it’s not as bad as you thought it would be (esp. because there’s no lines) and sometimes it clears up beautifully at like 1 p.m. and it’s too late for people in town to rush up there.
The silver lining of Bend being 30 miles away is that you can sometimes be rewarded for going up to the mtn when the weather looks less-than-ideal. What I mean by this is at a resort with slopeside accommodation and/or a ski village, the minute conditions improve everybody leaves their condo or hotel room and hits the slopes, even if it’s 2 or 3 p.m., and the runs become crowded almost instantly. Not at Bachelor!
I think that’s also one reason why Bachelor has a reputation of spoiled days / bad weather: if you’re on a ski vacation where you can stay at the mountain and the morning is ugly but the afternoon is nice, you can eat a leisurely brunch, go shopping, etc. and then catch some runs and remember it as a nice day. At Bachelor, if it clears up in the afternoon it’s a lost day unless you gambled and went up despite the morning conditions.