Before we jump into whatever the holiday season is going to be like—fingers crossed, sacrifices to Ullr for more snow—let’s take this last opportunity to broach a serious topic.
Size.
How big is too big? How many are too many? How much success is too much success, or even a harbinger of failure?
Throughout the life of Whistler, we’ve single-mindedly chased one goal: More. We wanted to be more than a regional ski town. In fact, the impetus for even developing Whistler, née London, mountain, wasn’t to build a ski resort, it was to host the Olympics. A means to an end.
Once built, demand grew organically. Skiers were local and regional, with a slowly growing percentage of those coming from further away. Whistler Mountain’s reputation for big, wild terrain grew.
And then? The province was convinced to allow the development of Blackcomb Mountain—many thanks, Al Raine, Hugh Smythe, et.al.
Blackcomb was the catalyst; competition was the fuel. And the goal morphed into growing Whistler into a world-class, destination mountain resort. The trajectory was set, the wheels began to turn faster, and the accolades rained down on the unlikely best ski resort in North America.
Whistler enjoyed a nearly unbroken string of No. 1 ratings in travel and ski magazines. In fact, it still does... except when it doesn’t. The Wall Street Journal recently ranked it No. 1, although I’m not sure that has as much to do with skiing as a place to invest. Earlier in the year, Tripadvisor also ranked it No. 1.
But those accolades aside, the ranking that rankled came from Ski Magazine’s 2024 Resort Guide. Not No. 1, not even No. 5 like last year. No. 21! And not even 21st in the world... or North America. No. 21 in the west!
That got the attention of the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW). While paying due respect to the resort’s amazing terrain, the compact pedestrian village, stunning scenery and the other things we do so well, the overarching impression of Ski’s voters was Whistler is too crowded, too expensive, and is delivering poor customer service.
Poor customer service?
When Blackcomb Mountain opened to the public in 1980, Franz Wilhelmsen, president of Whistler Mountain, thought it was a joke. In many ways, he was right. Blackcomb opened with not much terrain, not many runs, and not enough vertical to snag bragging rights. Oh, and 1980 was a year with little snow, but much rain. And let’s not talk about what interest rates were doing then.
But Blackcomb opened with a bold idea. If it couldn’t compete nose-to-nose with Whistler on the standard metrics of a ski hill, it would compete where Whistler was complacent—customer service. “We built a culture on outstanding service, friendliness and delivering the total experience,” Hugh Smythe remembered.
That meant friendly lifties, outstanding food, unexpected touches like Hugh and his senior managers sometimes clearing snow off of skiers’ cars in the afternoons, creating Sniffle Stations in the lift lines—RIP Sniffle Stations—and other unique offerings that developed a loyal following and forced Whistler to up its game.
I can understand Ski Magazine readers thinking the resort is too crowded. Hell, I think it’s too crowded. Ironically, a story in Ski Area Management late last month outlined the successful fight in Park City against Vail Resorts’ plan to install two new lifts... the lifts Whistler (Fitz chair) and Blackcomb (Jersey Cream) are in the
process of gaining. It all revolved around parking requirements, underscored by the concept of the resort’s comfortable carrying capacity (CCC).
What jumped out at me was this: “While the new lifts would not increase CCC a meaningful amount, according to experts asked to determine the calculations for both sides, the appeal said the resort’s parking mitigation plan was insufficient. It cited, for example, more than 68 mornings during the 2021-22 season when overflow parking was used.” Italics mine.
Only 68?
I don’t know how many respondents in Ski Magazine’s poll actually tried to park while they were in Whistler—hopefully not too many—but it’s the rare day for several seasons now I haven’t seen overflow parking during the meat of the season.
That, added to the numbers of skiers and boarders on groomed runs many days, are enough to keep anyone who can manage it up in the alpine or on the other side of boundary ropes.
Crowded? Check.
Too expensive? While the Epic Pass has made lift access remarkably inexpensive, anyone who can’t grasp the concept of what a bargain it is was likely shocked by the price of day tickets. Not just in Whistler, but pretty much everywhere. But to be honest, that’s their problem.
But too many times last season there was a recurring torrent of comments regarding high lodging prices and high restaurant prices. I have no idea what hotels/condos were charging last year. But I’m not sure it matters as long as people staying there
were feeling they weren’t providing value for the price paid.
Same with restaurants. A $25-dollar burger that’s mediocre and accompanied by bad service isn’t going to cut it. A $25-dollar burger that’s outstanding, coupled with good, attentive, welcoming service is worth every nickel.
So is this a matter of perception or performance? And at the end of the day, does that matter? Perception is reality.
None of the above is meant to call out or shame anyone. Coming out of the pandemic, coming into a time of relatively high inflation and having realized the goal of attracting more tourists, there aren’t any scapegoats and there aren’t any easy answers.
The RMOW is ideologically opposed to making it easier to arrive at the resort by private automobile, as evidenced most recently by its accord with Vail to not require more parking spaces as a result of the increased uphill capacity of the new Fitz chair. That’s a valid position, but comes with consequences in the form of disgruntled visitors and locals.
Vail has a program to cap the number of day tickets available on peak days. That’s helpful, but having largely replaced the need for day tickets with Epic Passes, probably isn’t a huge number of people.
Local entrepreneurs continue to struggle with unfilled staff positions and rapidly increasing costs of doing business. Hard to keep prices down and service up with that dynamic.
There aren’t going to be any easy solutions, but the RMOW, Vail Resorts, the Chamber of Commerce, and most other groups in town are searching for ways to make it work and keep this place thriving.
We all have a stake in this. We’re all going to have to be involved.
