As Vail Resorts became the second major ski resort operator in two weeks to announce layoffs Thursday, Aspen Skiing Co. CEO Mike Kaplan said his company hasn’t yet, and doesn’t plan to, lay off any of its staff. The SkiCo has been cutting expenses and eliminating vacant positions, Kaplan said.
A letter from Vail CEO Rob Katz to the company’s 3,300 employees announced that Vail would lay off 50 year-round employees and eliminate 92 unfilled positions. The publicly traded company also won’t give raises to any of its executives in fiscal year 2009, nor will it match employees’ contributions to their 401(k) funds for the 2009 calendar year. Vail will also restructure its marketing efforts.
“Our company will not be immune to the economy around us and it is imperative that we not stick our head in the sand about some of the bad news that is out there,” Katz wrote, citing lower advance bookings that are projected to take a major bite out of ski area business this winter.
While Katz’s letter said the job cuts would occur “across all our business units,” Vail spokeswoman Kelly Ladyga said in an e-mail that Vail would not comment on which divisions would be affected by the cuts. Aspen’s Hotel Jerome is managed by Rock Resorts, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vail Resorts. Aspen Sports, Aspen’s North Face store and the pro shop at the Aspen Golf Course are owned by SSV Ventures, of which Vail Resorts owns a controlling stake.
On Nov. 19, Intrawest, which owns Steamboat, Copper Mountain and Winter Park, announced that it would be making job cuts, but it did not specify how many. Intrawest is privately owned by private equity fund Fortress Investment Group.
Kaplan said he wasn’t surprised to hear the news out of Broomfield-based Vail after Intrawest’s similar announcement. Although bookings are slower in Aspen this year — somewhere in the 20 percent off range so far for the Christmas season — SkiCo’s strategy is to stay the course, Kaplan said. That means there will be essentially the same amount of employees, from lifties to busers to mountain maintenance.
“The strategy is to re-emphasize the guest experience,” Kaplan said. “To continue to focus on what has made us strong.”
He estimates that there are about a dozen job openings that the company decided not to fill, including some accounting and human resource positions. Other cost-cutting measures include nixing paper copies of monthly financial statements and expanding a program that gets SkiCo office staff out on to the front lines scanning tickets and busing tables.
SkiCo’s status as a privately held company owned by the Crown family of Chicago helps as well, he said.
“We have a different ownership group with a very long-term perspective on the importance of the brand and the guest experience,” Kaplan said. “It’s something that can be compromised in one visit.”
Vail, on the other hand, “needs to be responsive to a broader set of stakeholders,” he added. “It’s a tough position to have to speak to Wall Street, your employees and your community.”
curtis@aspendailynews.com
