Bolton Valley Resort reopened its bike park last weekend after a delay in getting a critical part from Canada for the bike lift. The part could not be manufactured in time for the scheduled opening in mid-June.
When it broke during the conversion of the lift from skiing to bikes, the manufacturer did not have one on the shelf, said Lindsay DesLauriers, the resort’s president and CEO.
“It was a big feeling of relief, finally, for everybody to get under way,” DesLauriers said.
DesLauriers pointed to a reason for optimism for the season. She said the resort rented out more bikes last weekend than it did any weekend last summer.
Another reason for optimism: Bookings at the hotel are starting to come in.
Next Wednesday, the resort plans to go to five-day weeks until Labor Day. For these first two weeks of the season, it’s been open for three-day weekends only.
A bigger challenge, DesLauriers said, is hiring enough people. Because the resort has not been able to fill some jobs, she said, it may not be able to make all the improvements it had planned this summer as quickly as she had hoped. For example, she said, the resort had anticipated hiring two people with carpentry skills for a variety of projects, but was not able to fill those jobs.
One reason it is so hard to hire: competition.
“It’s definitely driving wages up,” DesLauriers said. “There’s some pressure put on us by some of the bigger ski areas who are making announcements about their new minimum wage.”
For example, Vail Resorts, which owns Stowe Mountain Resort, Mount Snow and Okemo Mountain Resort, announced that its minimum wage is going up to $20 an hour next winter. DesLauriers said Bolton Valley, a family-run standalone ski area, has not set its minimum wage for next season and probably will not until later in the summer.
“Vail has a lot more fluidity to their cash flow than we do,” DesLauriers said. “We’re going to need to be a little more responsive to our summer business.”
There’s also competition on benefits. After Smugglers’ Notch Resort announced it would offer employees free day care, Bolton Valley followed suit.
“We thought it was a great idea,” DesLauriers said. “We jumped on the bandwagon behind them and are now offering free child care for our employees as well as free summer camp, (provided) space (is) available, for the older kids.”
She said free child care has helped the resort retain and maybe even attract a few employees.
In winter, DesLauriers said Bolton Valley employs as many as 350 people. This summer, she said, about 125 people are working there, many of them part-timers.
She said Bolton Valley has been able to retain younger workers in the face of competition from ski resorts with deeper pockets because it offers a place where workers can connect with the people and the place they work for.
“We’ve been successful in retaining a lot of people,” she said.
The DesLauriers have long ties to Bolton Valley. DesLauriers’ father built Bolton Valley and operated it for 31 years before the family lost it in foreclosure, but five years ago, DesLauriers and her brothers banded together with their father and other local investors to buy it back.
One struggle the resort faces in attracting employees is housing.
“We have made job offers to people out of state who are trying to move to Vermont, and then they accept the job but contingent on finding housing, and then in the end they can’t come here because they can’t find housing,” DesLauriers said. “So it is having a definite impact on us.”
Last year, the resort bought a building that provided 15 additional housing units for employees. Now, it’s planning more employee housing in an effort to attract and retain workers.
“Especially up here at the top of the mountain, it’s especially important with gas prices that we have some on-site housing,” DesLauriers said.
Bolton Valley has had a network of mountain biking trails for a long time, but it was a challenging trail network, and DesLauriers said the resort has been adding beginner and intermediate trails. A crew is finishing the mountain’s first top-to-bottom beginner trail, due to open next weekend at the latest.
Later this summer and maybe into next summer, the resort plans to complete two intermediate trails.
“Our vision with the bike park is to take what has been a pretty exclusive set of trails for expert riders only and try to create a place where anyone can come of any ability level and access the sport for the first time, kind of like what we are for skiing,” DesLauriers said. “We’ve been limited to more experienced riders only, but that’s about to shift.”