Benjamin Chaiken: Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Kirsten Lynch: Thanks, Ben.
Operator: Our next question is from Chris Woronka of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Chris Woronka: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. So I think one of the things in the prepared comments, right, was a mention of trying to get more folks that typically just go to the East Coast into an advanced commitment product. How do you do that? I mean, is that a function of €“ are you going to have to use price to do that or is there another way to try to get more of those folks into a pass?
Kirsten Lynch: Thanks for the question, Chris. The East is quite unique for us and that it over-indexes on lift tickets relative to our other geographies. So when you think about the progress that we’ve made in building our pass business, we have really transformed our Rockies and our West Region resorts in terms of a commitment in advance to a pass. The East is a little bit different, where there’s still a large percentage of the visitation that occurs on lift tickets, and that is part of the reason why we saw an impact from the limitations on our operations and a significant impact because of that reliance on lift tickets. We are very focused on it and we believe that it is a big opportunity for us in terms of stability for the company.
And by the way, what happened here with the East is exactly why we have been focused on pass. It is exactly why this strategy of moving as many of our guests into a pass is so critical. In the East in particular, we have products and pricing that are already €“ have already launched into the marketplace, and the goal is to use our data to really be targeted, segmented and targeted to convey the benefits of moving from a lift ticket into an advanced commitment product. We have a northeast value pass that has been in the market for a couple of years. We also have an Epic Day Pass that is specifically tailored for those local resorts in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic and East. And our goal is to continue to grow the pass business, really focused on that East area.
And at the same time by moving that €“ those visits out of lift tickets into the pass that we create more stability for the company for situations like this. I certainly think that the significance of what our teams in the East have been dealing with in terms of late openings, early closures, limited terrain, has the significance of what they were dealing with could actually have had €“ it could have been a much more significant impact on the company than this guidance reduction that we’re announcing. And so we’re very pleased that with the stability that we have and we believe there’s more to be done there.
Chris Woronka: Okay. Thanks. Super helpful with all the detail. Just as a follow-up and you guys had talked a lot about this last year, employee housing investments. It sounds like there’s less pressure there this year, but maybe you can just give us a quick update and rundown of where you are in your initiatives and whether the market conditions are improving or not in that regard on employee housing?
Kirsten Lynch: Absolutely. We are so thrilled to have gotten fully staffed and the investments that we made in our employees and wages and benefits really resulted in us getting to a great staffing situation. And affordable housing in our mountain communities is always a challenge. It has been a challenge for a long time and I think it continues to be a challenge, obviously this year. Thankfully it was not, it did not prevent us from getting fully staffed. But what you’ll see from us is that we will be continually focused on it and continually looking for opportunities, whether that is building housing on our own land or creating partnerships in our mountain communities to enable projects. So we have a couple of projects, one that came online this year at Park City Mountain, and we have some that are in various stages of the process of getting to approvals or construction.
And this just needs to be a continual focus for the company. Is it always going to be something that prevents us from getting staffed? Obviously not since we got fully staffed this year, but that does not mean that we ever take our foot off the gas and trying to make this better because it is such a huge challenge in our mountain communities.
Chris Woronka: Okay. Very helpful. Thanks, Kirsten.
Operator: Our next question is from Laurent Vasilescu of BNP Paribas.
Laurent Vasilescu: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my question. Kirsten, it’s great to hear about the investments in the high speed Chair lift. As you know, these investments have been made over the years. But as we think about this ski season and how just disruptive it was in the East Coast with the warm season, do you think you might need to make some more investments in snowmaking capabilities to potentially offset this long-term headwind?
Kirsten Lynch: Yes. I think that’s a great question, Laurent. And I think that’s something that we absolutely will be looking at and assessing. We have some incredible high efficiency snowmaking in the East and our mountain operations team will be looking at where do we need to make additional investments for the future. I would say in this particular situation with what happened in the East region and this significant impact was related to cold temperatures. These resorts in this grouping of the East are virtually 100% reliant on snowmaking, and in order to do snowmaking you need cold temperatures. And what happened this year is they could not get enough cold temperatures to actually make the snow. And in some cases we’re down to grass in some areas as early as January. So yes, on the snowmaking and on pass and the network that we’ve created and continually moving people out of lift tickets into a pass.
Laurent Vasilescu: Great. And that maybe a good segue for the hands-free pass. I saw a couple weeks ago, T-Mobile announced a partnership with you to rollout 5G. Is that 5G capability, is that tied to supporting the hands-free pass or is that to maybe rollout future capabilities on the technology front?
Kirsten Lynch: We are very proud to have a partnership with T-Mobile and their support and enthusiasm for what we do in creating an experience of a lifetime, and they’re very excited to be a part of it. The partnership is not directly related to the innovation that we have created and are launching. Although I know that as partners they want to find ways to actually support that and the overall guest experience to make it strong next year and in ongoing years.
Laurent Vasilescu: Very helpful. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Operator: Our next question is from David Katz of Jefferies. Your line is open.
David Katz: Thanks for taking my question. Good morning. Can you just talk for a minute please about skier visits? And in some areas, I think you talked about pressure. But can you talk about areas where it was particularly strong. And in particular the Colorado segment and how those markets are doing in terms of visitation?
