Far be it for adjacent ski resorts to cooperate on any front other than regional marketing. But now Alta and Snowbird have announced that the 2001-2002 season will be the first to offer an Alta Snowbird Pass—allowing skiers (sorry riders) access to both resorts with just one ticket.
This is progressive to say the least. The joint effort is a first for two major U.S. ski resorts to work together and offer one ticket. It is just the kind of forward thinking Utah needs to become the number one ski destination in the Western hemisphere. Our self-made prophecy is now well on its way.
The politics involved in conjoining the other five adjacent ski resorts with Alta and Snowbird are like getting Iran and Iraq to sit down for tea. But if Snowbird, Alta, Brighton, Solitude, Park City, Deer Valley and the Canyons were all connected and accessible by a single ticket, Utah would surge forward to surpass even Colorado for skier days.
European ski resorts have been doing this for years. In France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, a dozen ski resorts can be accessed with one ticket—even across national borders!
You see, European resorts don’t create conflict with each other on lift tickets. They make it work. If seven European resorts are adjacent, each will sell lift tickets with one common processing feature. The tickets are processed at the bottom of each lift, and then tallied up by lifts accessed at the end of the day. The resorts then divvy up the dollars by resort-lifts accessed.
Simple. Elegant. Attractive.
Now then, how do we get Brighton involved?