Vermont’s downhill ski areas reported an additional 230,000 visits over the 2021-22 ski season, an increase of 6.5% over the previous season, according to the Vermont Ski Areas Association.
The rebound came after many states — including Vermont — lifted travel restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, which had hobbled the industry in the previous ski season.
“The biggest thing was being able to welcome skiers from other states,” said the association’s president, Molly Mahar.
Vermont’s ski resorts still have not fully recovered from the pandemic. This season’s skier visit total of 3.76 million was still 6% below the 10-year average, though Mahar said that was more due to warm weather than the pandemic. A skier visit is defined as one person skiing or snowboarding for one day.
The association reported that despite the border reopening, Canadian skiers were slow to return to American resorts due to Covid testing requirements at the border.
“There were still ongoing complications for Canadians traveling to the U.S. for most of the ski season this year,” Mahar said.
Like other industries, ski resorts struggled to hire all the people they needed, Mahar said.
The weather presented another challenge. The early season was too warm to make much snow, Mahar said, which led to disappointing holidays.
Smugglers’ Notch vice president for market management Steve Clokey said the resort was able to attenuate some of the lost business from unseasonably warm weather early in the season with holiday bookings, which he said are more about reservations for a destination resort.
“Smugglers’ Notch is a destination resort, so a lot of our bookings are coming in mid- to late December for the holiday week, and we did very, very, very good on the destination reservations,” Clokey said.
Snowfall was down in March, typically one of the snowiest months, but several areas, including Killington, Jay Peak and Sugarbush extended their season with snowmaking. Jay Peak’s and Sugarbush’s seasons went into May. Killington had the longest season, offering skiing and snowboarding from Nov. 5 to June 6.
Killington spokesperson Kristel Killary reported that the resort saw a 13% increase in ski visits this past season.
Nationwide, Mahar said, the ski industry reached a record 61 million visits, with most of that growth in the Rockies. Still, Vermont remains the number four state in the country for skier visits, the association reported.
Skiing in Vermont is a $1.6 billion industry, according to the association.
Correction: Due to erroneous information provided by the Vermont Ski Areas Association, an earlier version of this story misstated the state’s national ranking in total skier visits.
