Vail Resorts, Inc. (NYSE:MTN) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Kirsten Lynch: And Laurent, I would just build on that to also note that our guidance assumes that the current economic conditions continue. And if there was a significant change that could impact our outlook.

Laurent Vasilescu: Okay. Very helpful. And Kirsten, it’s great to hear about the smartphone initiative. Are there any learnings or are there any other initiatives that we should contemplate maybe not for this year, but maybe going forward that could maybe further elevate the consumer experience? And then once — sorry, one housekeeping question, Michael, I didn’t see this in the press release, but should we still anticipate $175 million investment in employee wages? Or was that up since that announcement earlier this spring?

Michael Barkin: So I’ll take that one, the $175 million investment in wages was incorporated into our guidance in September that we reaffirmed and so we are on track with that.

Kirsten Lynch: And with regards to your question about the guest experience, we are very excited about mobile pass and mobile lift tickets that is actually being tested this season for a rollout to our guests next season. And we have not announced any other innovations at this point that I’m discussing, but I will tell you that, yes, we’re constantly focused on every aspect of the guest experience and where can we make investments or innovate in order to make that better?

Laurent Vasilescu: Very helpful. Thank you very much. Best of luck.

Kirsten Lynch: Thank you.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Jeff Stantial with Stifel.

Jeff Stantial: Hey, good morning, everyone. Let me start by echoing some of my peer sentiment and say thank you, Michael, for all your help over the years and best of luck on your next venture.

Michael Barkin: Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Stantial: Starting off here, I wanted to hone back in on some of the lodging bookings color. Kirsten, you talked to bookings pacing in line with pre-COVID levels, if memory serves at this time last year, you were trending more ahead versus pre-COVID. So is that called deceleration? Is that more a function of some of the pent up demand that we saw last season? I do recall you did talk to tough RevPAR comps on the last earnings call? Or is there anything in here more on the macro? Thanks.

Kirsten Lynch: Yes. Hi, Jeff. I think we did see some different dynamics last year with COVID, there was a lot of pent up demand for travel and people getting back to having experiences. And so there were some dynamics that we saw where decisions and bookings were made very early and much earlier than typical. There was a lot of enthusiasm and pent up demand. So I think last year, there were just some unique dynamics as people got back out doing things. And at least what we’re seeing right now in our indicators is returning more to a pattern that we would have seen pre-COVID.

Jeff Stantial: Okay. That makes sense. Thank you, Kirsten. And then for my follow-up moving to call it the Epic Pass Tiering strategy, now that the selling season has wrapped up and you’ve been able to parse through some of the data. Any thoughts on potentially continuing to introduce new pricing tiers in order to succeed and penetrate that more lower frequency destination, currently window ticket skier and apologies for potentially front running the Investor Day here, but any thoughts there would be helpful?