New Lawsuit Is Raising Bigger Questions About the Cost of Skiing

If you’ve looked at the price of a walk-up lift ticket lately, you were probably pretty shocked and had the same reaction as just about everyone else: “How have we normalized these prices?”

At many of the country’s biggest destination resorts, paying more than $250—or over $300 during peak times—for a single day on the mountain is no longer unusual. Meanwhile, skiers willing to buy a multi-resort pass like the Epic or Ikon months in advance can often ski for a fraction of that per day.

That contrast—the growing gap between passholders and day-ticket buyers—has fundamentally changed the economics of skiing over the past decade. Now it’s also drawing increased legal scrutiny.

A new antitrust lawsuit filed on Aug. 6 against Vail Resorts, Alterra Mountain Company, and some other big players in the industry is raising questions about price-fixing and whether the industry’s biggest players are competing as aggressively as skiers would expect—or even at all.

Three skiers filed the proposed class-action lawsuit in federal court in Colorado alleging that Vail Resorts, Alterra Mountain Company, Boyne Resorts, POWDR, and Boulder-based research firm RRC Associates coordinated pricing by sharing confidential business information. The defendants have not yet responded to the lawsuit, and the allegations have not been proven in court.

It’s the second major antitrust lawsuit regarding pricing filed against Vail and Alterra in just a few months. The first, filed in March, challenges how the companies have structured their multi-resort pass offerings. Both companies have denied wrongdoing in that case.

For skiers, though, the legal claims aren’t the particularly interesting part of the story. The bigger question is, why does skiing feel so much more expensive? So much so that individual skiers are bringing lawsuits?

Lift ticket prices have climbed dramatically over the past several years—more than 55 percent since 2020, according to ​the lawsuit—particularly at destination resorts owned by the industry’s largest operators. Walk-up tickets that once hovered around $100-150 have crept well beyond $250 at many resorts during peak periods.

At the same time, season passes have arguably become one of the best values in skiing—provided you’re willing to commit months before the snow falls.

The result is a pricing strategy that’s become familiar to most of us:

• Buy a pass in the spring or summer and ski relatively inexpensively, OR
• Wait until winter, and a handful of lift tickets will cost way more than an entire season pass. Even buying a few weeks or months in advance warrants high prices, although much lower than day-of.

That’s not accidental—or surprising. Vail Resorts has hung its entire business on the success of pass sales, and Vail, along with most other resort operators, has spent years cultivating this army of return visitors, who then spend money on lodging, food, lessons, rentals, and so on.

So what’s the issue?

Like airlines, hotels, and concert venues, many ski resorts now use dynamic pricing—adjusting lift ticket prices based on demand, holidays, weather forecasts, and booking patterns.

This is where things get dicey: The new lawsuit alleges shared use of the Aspenware ticketing platform between several resort operators as one example of allegedly coordinated pricing. That said, using the same software isn’t illegal. Sharing confidential information that influences how prices are set is against the law, and that’s what the courts will be tasked with determining.

Why This Matters To Skiers

Even if the lawsuit never reaches trial, it reflects a broader debate that’s been building within skiing for years.

As ownership of destination resorts has consolidated into fewer companies, skiers have increasingly wondered whether meaningful competition still exists among the country’s largest mountains.

That doesn’t necessarily mean prices would be dramatically lower if ownership looked different. Resorts operate in the real world, and face rising labor costs, insurance premiums, energy bills, infrastructure investments, and increasingly unpredictable winters. But it’s not out of the question for consumers to wonder whether consolidation is giving operators more pricing leverage than they once had.

The lawsuit is in its earliest stages—the courts haven’t even determined whether the allegations have merit, and the defendants will have an opportunity to respond. But the case is another reminder of how the business of skiing has changed dramatically.

Today’s ski industry revolves around advance commitment, multi-resort passes that lock you in, and sophisticated dynamic pricing models. For frequent skiers, that translates to a great value. For people who ski only a few days each winter, want to wait to see how the weather pans out, or travelers who make last-minute plans, it causes serious sticker shock.

From where we sit, this lawsuit is questioning whether the economics of skiing are naturally punishing the latter group of skiers, or if there’s something more nefarious at work. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

SKI will continue following these cases as they develop and update this story as the defendants respond to the allegations.