Vail Resorts’ 2025-26 North American Skier Visits Crater
A “moderate decline” in Epic Pass unit and sales dollars may offset the pain.
How bad was Vail Resorts’ 2025-26 winter?
Well, the company yesterday shared an initial estimate of approximately 14.4 million skier visits across its 37 North American resorts this season.
To put that number in context, 14.4 million skier visits is:
A 14.9 percent drop from Vail’s 2024-25 skier visits
The lowest number of skier visits (excluding 2019-20), to Vail’s North American ski areas since the 2017-18 ski season, during which Vail owned just 13 North American ski areas
Just 6.7 percent higher than the 13.5 million total skier visits Vail recorded for the Covid-shortened 2019-20 winter, which ended March 14
Four percent below the 15 million skier visits that Vail recorded for the 2018-19 winter, during which the company operated just 17 North American ski resorts
Resort acquisitions in black.
This 14.9 percent drop is even more severe than the 11.9 percent year-over-year skier-visit decline that Vail reported year-to-date on March 9. Vail is blaming the western visitation crash on “record low snowfall and historically bad temperatures.”
Still, it could’ve been a lot worse. Vail’s Rocky Mountain visits declined 25 percent, and a strong overall winter east of the Mississippi surely buoyed Vail’s overall numbers.
It’s hard to know just yet how to interpret these numbers, as the National Ski Areas Association won’t release their estimate of nationwide skier visits until May. But we do have a handful of data points: