Seem to recall Vail had their plans for an expanded parking lot and proposal for hundreds of new on-snow lodges being knocked backed by environmental planning. Or it could have been some other governmental or local agency. I know finances are dire at the moment, but is there a point where Vail could resurrect this proposal years from now? Are you in favour of it? My understanding is Vail's business model is to "give away" the loss leader that is the Epic Pass and make up for it by monopolizing food and beverage and shops and services and accommodation in resort, where they could set the price and earn profits for their shareholders.
As far as I know the village development over the existing carpark has been approved. It is certainly part of the planning documentation.
Where will people park then? Or will there be underground parking? Would have to be many levels deep to accommodate existing parking needs plus the capacity from the new village. Also, is it possible to build ski-in/out from the new lodges in the parking lot area? Or is the creek in the way for this to be possible?
Perisher desperately needs something like a town centre to become remotely functional as a town/village and I think the vast majority of people will back that sort of thing. Look how having a proper town centre helps places like Thredbo and Buller to have a focus. BUT there is no way anyone except Vail wants Vail to get a monopoly over anything but the lifts and ski instruction, so the "powers that be" will make sure there is always a good selection of cafes, pubs, ski hires, etc with a variety of owners. Perisher stakeholders will raise a hell of a stink about it if the (mostly) clueless bureaucrats go close to allowing Vail to get market dominance in any of those sectors of business.
A masterplan for the village was approved many years ago. That approval may even have lapsed by now, For car parking there are also plans (not sure how far along the approval process they got) for more road side carparking and a new car park at Pipers Gap and believe some changes to parking at Smiggins. Part of the effort to make up some of the potential loss in parking spaces when/if a village gets built on the existing car park.
I'm all in favour of shops and services not being monopolised, but I find most accommodation sucks at the moment and are ripe for takeover and infusion of capital. I just don't understand why lodge owners can't set aside a bit of money every year to improve the buildings or at least improve the rooms to have 3 or 4 star amenities. Seems pretty standard in other parts of the world, especially in Europe, where cheap accommodation can be had that is 3 to 5 star hotel like.
the village doesn't cover the whole carpark. About half, IIRC. That means only 2 or 3 levels to replicate existing capacity.
More car parking at Perisher is an absolute priority. Not many regular guests want to take the ski tube as time is limited and most people have an AWD these days. The convenience of driving to the mountain far outweighs the extra cost and 10 mins less driving of the tube. I genuinely cant imagine how Perisher would manage with even less car parking? Will we need to catch a bus from Sponars as the resort gets busier? F that.
Perisher has more carparking this season than ever before . They've widened the road at Perisher view so cars can park nose in. Rather than nose to tail.
After this year it should be obvious that Vail already have too much power to ruin Falls and Hotham's , skiers , lodges and businesses. Dont think they intend to make things better. They are not a charity, have no social connections to Australia , decisions are made to maximise profits and control the market.
If Perisher wants to make strong financial returns into the future, they should be moving away from their dependency on private car parking, because it's just too space and cost inefficient. Instead, they should look at public transport (such as buses or even trackless trams) to Jindabyne. But a fleet of vehicles would need to be operating year-round in order to justify the expense of buying them, making Perisher's summer liveliness an imperative that reaches beyond being merely hedge against warming winters. That said, a bunch of apartment towers and some swanky cafes built in an isolated spot does not make a 'town centre'. The place needs to be masterplanned to become a real mountain town in the public interest, rather than have private interests parachute in some luxury 'condos'.
We've already had a decade of spam and false advertising nonstop about the new village and it turned out to be a hoax that packer never intended to complete. Another decade of that is not ok. Perisher can't be trusted to not just use it as marketing bs. Reminds me of snowy hydro lying in their marketing for 5yrs about the dam wall rebuild that was going to include dam wall viewing platforms as a boost to local tourism. They built the platforms, locked them up with prison fencing and then told everyone bad luck we lied.
Yeah I'd love to see Skitube be cheaper, especially given the already outrageous cost of skitube-only tickets (including pre-covid seasons). But while I'd love to see the train get more use, when it comes to planning for Perisher's longer term future, how confident can we be in the old train holding up over time? Or can it be substantially upgraded? And most importantly, will running the Skitube regularly in summer ever be viable?
A time honoured (and non-scam) strategy for selling a potential development site is to get a DA and sell without any intention of actually doing the development but with the DA in place. The DA adds value. There is nothing at all underhand about the practice.
In summer it is much easier to drive up, no road clearing problems and park pass is half the price. However, to prove your point, they did run skitube in summer for the L'etape cycling event the first year, when the finish was in Perisher
The Village expansion was killed off by National Parks and their Bed Tax. Even existing commercial lodges are struggling with this huge impost and many have sold in the last few years. Its nothing to do with Perisher "being bastards" or current or previous owners being evil. The new village development was fully approved , had excellent environmental plan , state government support, commercial finance ready, skier support etc. The wheels came off when NWSNP applied bed tax based on 80% occupancy year round for the new village. This is highly unrealistic based on similar resorts worldwide where summer occupancy would be lucky to be 30%. Commercially it is nonviable to build the new village and previous owners dropped out of the tender. I believe the village development was put out to the market more than 5 years ago and no one has stepped up to take over, its just not financially viable with the current rules.
I don't see the point of a "village " in perisher. Though some sort of Canadian style accommodation / food etc buildings day area would be good . The perisher building is disgusting and so poorly designed
If you spend ten years telling everyone that you are going to build it, when you had zero intention of even starting, that is actually the definition of lying. I totally appreciate your point, but they knew all along it was only to talk the price up. So it should have been done behind closed doors and not marketed to customers as a drawcard. Misleading and deceptive.
Better than RE ads sating ‘Build your dream home! (STCA)’ - there’s a lot of hurdles in that acronym.
There is no village. Their was never going to be one. There never will be one. So maybe, stop marketing it.
it’s not exactly a cheap exercise! With not many builders in the area the costs really blow out, I know we spend nearly half a mil re cladding our lodge and triple glazing windows plus a new roof. I’d say a 50% tax. this^^ I doubt a village is viable as Perisher would struggle as a year round resort. What makes Thredbo work is you drive in, leave the car and everything is there. At Perisher you would still have drive to access things like the Kosci walk.
Would love to ski Perisher more as a family but the serious lack of accomodation on the hill makes it a NO or very close to a NO The lack of bars and restaurants at night also mean pretty much a NO I have no interest in staying in Jindy and commuting daily So we will be going to Thredbo but would prefer Perisher for the kids Build a Village and accomodation and associated restaurants and bars, but privately owned and run. All that Perisher has besides great skiing, is a massive carpark, the TUBE and a food court.
Not sure if this is sarcastic or not? Making it cheaper and more frequent (which is impossible anyway) wont make it more convenient than driving to the mountain with an 8.15am arrival at Perisher for first lifts (leaving Jindy at 7.30, vs 7am to get the tube). The reason the car parks are jammed is because of the easy access - 100% agree though, if leaving Jindy after 8am on a peak season weekend ski tube all the way vs parking 1-2ks from Perisher.
Vails strategy at other resorts is built around controlling the village so I can see it happening for that reason
Depends on the era of Vail Resorts leadership. The reason VR had a bankruptcy or two was because building luxury lodging and relying on the real estate market was a failure. Part of what Rob Katz did when he became CEO was to move even farther away from the lodging component of owning a resort. The Epic Pass started in 2008. That saved VR during that recession. The next shift came after 2011 when it became possible to build summer activities such as ziplines or lift-served mountain bike parks on U.S. Forest Land. Took a few years for the Forest Service to figure out new rules, get approval for proposals, and built the facilities. Year round resorts were common in the northeast because some were all on private land but really didn't exist in the Rockies before about 2015. If you check the lodging options in the large VR destination resorts like Vail, Keystone, Park City, or W-B, I doubt VR dominates the number of rooms available. Alterra much prefers to partner with other companies when it comes to lodging. Boyne is doing the same at Big Sky. I think the same could be said for Jackson Hole, Telluride, and Taos Ski Valley. There is resort lodging slopeside but there is also plenty of other options close by.
Interesting. There are no big accommodation companies in the Australian ski fields, even in cities and towns the hotels tend to be individually owned and franchised into hotel chains. Accommodation on Australian ski fields can be split into three or four categories: Club lodges are still the most common form of accommodation in Australian ski fields, there are nearly a thousand of them. They started when a group of friends or colleagues formed a ski club, raised some money and built a ski lodge. Club lodges were built between 1927 and 1996, although many have been rebuilt in recent years. While no clubs have been founded for many years, these days people buy a share in a club instead. That allows them to get relatively affordable accommodation in the snow. Some clubs allow commercial guests, but most clubs only allow members and their friends to stay there. Most are only on one mountain but some clubs have spread to up to four or five ski resorts. Standards range from backpacker hostel level to really luxurious but most clubs offer between 3 and 4 star standard accommodation. Commercial lodges have been around as long as club lodges, but they are less common. They operate a bit like residential hotels, people get a bedroom, breakfast, access to a communal lounge room and often dinner is included in the package as well. Flats (or apartments for Americans like MarzNC) only really appeared in the 1970s and became more common in the 1990s. They have private accommodation, but offer no interaction with other people in the building except for (usually) a communal ski room. The fourth category is accommodation for resort employees. Many blocks were built specifically for that purpose, but increasingly lift companies have bought up failed club lodges. Accommodation can be rather "agricultural" for people at the bottom of the food chain like towies (as many as eight people in a room with bunk beds and threadbare carpet). But the kids in places like that often party hard, so they don't spend much time in their rooms anyway. However some resort accommodation can be rather nice. Increasingly some resorts are accommodating their staff in towns off mountain and bussing them up the hill every day. That works for places with easy access like Thredbo, but it's impossible for resorts that are a long way from towns like Mt Baw Baw.
As with snow conditions, my impression is that the Australian ski scene is similar to the U.S. northeast (New England, NY). There are "lodges" that are equivalent to club lodges, for members and their guests. Many have been around for decades, long before quad chairlifts and gondolas were built. There are still old fixed-grip double chairs and T-bars around in that region. But the history and experience of Vail Resorts is based in Colorado and Tahoe. VR only started buying small ski areas in the midwest and the northeast in 2012, with the goal of selling more Epic passes to people in large cities such as Chicago or New York or Boston. VR manages those ski areas/resorts very differently than the destination resorts in the Rockies or along the Pacific coast. I assume some of the experience from incorporating the midwest "urban" ski areas into the VR collective might have been helpful for Falls Creek and Hotham. Large destination resorts such as Aspen, Squaw/Alpine, or Big Sky have been working on providing more lodging for resort employees in recent years. The success of AirBnB/VRBO meant fewer low cost options for employees starting around 2010. For example, Boyne announced in 2019 that a new building for employee housing was planned for Big Sky that would house an additional 75 people, bringing the total to about 500 beds.
No serious I think it is too expensive to compete. Can it only travel at the current rate cos there is one track.?
yep i spose with a seasons pass + travel 7 x a week it would be economical but boring. For those of us who are occasional NSW skiers it is expensive to CP.
Well in that case they have no excuse for driving to Perisher. The car park there always reminds me of a giant shopping centre.
