Despite variants and the lingering pandemic, ski areas across Vermont say the winter season brought more visitors to the slopes.
Ski Vermont has just released its annual report on winter resort visitation across the state and the 2021-22 season saw an increase of 6.5 percent in skier visits over the previous year.
While the total of 3.76 million skier visits is below the state’s 10-year average, it is a rebound from the previous year according to Ski Vermont President Molly Mahar.
“I think it was a couple of things," Mahar said. "I mean everyone is always excited at the beginning of the season. And then we’ve definitely seen an explosion of interest in all things outdoor recreation. So I think you are seeing people that wanted to get outside during the winter, that was certainly a safe place to be. And then being able to freely travel to Vermont. A lot of people that like to ski here in the state were not able to access it in the prior season. And so I think a combination of those things made people just very excited to get back to Vermont to ski.”
Mahar noted that Vermont was not the only state to see more skiers on the slopes.
“The country as a whole set a record of 61 million skier visits this year which is great," Mahar said. "We obviously didn't set a record here in the Northeast nor did we in Vermont. But as I understand it, and I haven’t seen all the numbers published yet, but the Northeast region which is New England and New York state was up about 4 percent. So if Vermont is up 6 ½ percent that means that we did pretty well as a state this year.”
At Okemo Mountain, Communications Director Bonnie MacPherson says they had a “good, solid” season.
“What we found was the majority of the people visiting Okemo were season pass holders and they’d switched from being day visitors to season pass holders," MacPherson said. "So that was encouraging for us.”
While skier visits were reassuring, below-average snowfall meant resorts had to rely on snowmaking, which MacPherson says was only one hurdle.
“We certainly faced challenges last year," MacPherson said. "Partly with the weather. Early season really wasn’t great for making snow. We utilize a lot of low energy snowmaking systems that allow us to make snow more efficiently at marginal temperatures. We also were faced with some staffing issues and one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve increased our starting wage at $20 an hour. And we’re also really focused on providing affordable housing for our staff.”
Skiing brings in $1.6 billion to the state annually according to Ski Vermont.
