Vail Resorts details two-year transformation strategy

The plan is designed to improve organisational effectiveness and scale for operating leverage as the company grows.

Upasana Mukherjee September 27 2024

Mountain resort operator Vail Resorts has unveiled a two-year Resource Efficiency Transformation Plan, which aims to prepare the company for future growth and global expansion.

The plan is designed to improve organisational effectiveness and scale for operating leverage as the company grows.

Over the past decade, Vail Resorts has expanded from ten to 42 owned and operated mountain resorts across four countries, more than doubling its staff headcount.

The company has captured initial acquisition synergies and invested more than $2bn in guest and employee experiences, as well as several innovations.

With a common enterprise technology ecosystem and data analytics capabilities, Vail Resorts expects to transform resource efficiency at scale.

Vail Resorts CEO Kirsten Lynch said: “We believe this is a natural progression and next step for our company, that builds upon our success and paves the way for the next phase of growth.

“Our mission: to create an Experience of a Lifetime for our employees and our guests, galvanises our company, as does our commitment to reinvesting for growth.”

The company's new strategy is expected to yield $100m in annualised cost efficiencies by the end of the 2026 fiscal year.

This will be achieved through scaled operations, global shared services, and expanded workforce management.

However, achieving these efficiencies will result in position eliminations, impacting less than 2% of the total workforce, including 14% of the corporate workforce and less than 1% of the operations workforce.

The transformation plan consists of three pillars - scaled operations, global shared services, and expanded workforce management.

Operations leaders at Vail Resorts have developed best practices across their global resorts, which will now be leveraged to capture acquisition synergies and introduce new tools to support operations company-wide.

This initiative aims to enhance the guest experience and lessen the administrative load on frontline managers.

As part of the plan, Vail Resorts intends to consolidate and outsource its internal business services and call centres into a global shared services model.

This model will support its North American operations and can be scaled for future global expansion.

The company has already made strides in Europe with the acquisition of Andermatt-Sedrun and Crans-Montana Mountain Resort in Switzerland. 

The workforce management technology implemented across North American resorts has provided managers with tools and data insights for efficient talent allocation and team members with improved visibility and access to available shifts.

The transformation plan will expand this technology by incorporating best practice models, adding more lines of business and departments, and introducing new functionality.

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