Posts tagged baggage fee

Airline Fee Model for Ski Resorts?

4 months ago

by Eric Hoffman in article

Airlines are raking it in with their fees these days…$1.38 Billion (for baggage and reservation changes) in the first three months of this year alone! Now, I don’t agree that airlines pay no taxes on the fees they collect from things such as checked bags, assigned seats, itinerary changes and those lovely ‘snack packs’. In particular, I find a statement from Spirit Airlines’ CEO Ben Baldanza in his testimony before the House Transportation Committee that checked bags are “not essential” to travel. Well Mr Baldanza, for anyone going on a vacation other than to a nudist colony, you might want to pack along a change or two of clothes, and if you’re taking a ski vacation I can think of a few other items to pack along as well.

This did get me to wondering if perhaps the airline fee-based model could work for the ski resort industry. In fact, here are a few ideas for fees that ski resorts could charge as well as a “lift ticket”:

Parking Fee – how about charging even more for people who don’t pre-pay for their parking?!
Man-Made Snow Access Fee – this would a great revenue producer in the early season, if you don’t pay, you don’t get to ski on the runs with man-made snow
Grooming Fee – those fancy grooming machines aren’t cheap and the people who drive them don’t work for free, so why not a fee to ski the groomed runs
Terrain Park Fee – jibs and jumps need a huge amount of building and maintenance
Mountain Evacuation Fee – I figure this could apply to any number of things, from toboggan rides to lift evacs
First Tracks Fee – for those who adhere to the “No friends on a powder day rule” and can afford to buy their fresh tracks
Front of the Line Fee – lift-line cutting fee for those who hate to wait
Gear Fee – you can ride the lift, but if you want to bring along a ski, pole or snowboard…pay up

What do you think about this shift to à la carte based pricing in the travel industry? Is it good, bad and what other crazy fees do you think a ski resort could charge for?!

Photo Credit: rcmaclean on Flickr

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Airline baggage fees and the ski industry

1 year ago

by Eric Hoffman in article

This post languished as a short draft through the whole winter. Then I took a trip to Colorado about two weeks ago on Delta, brought my own ski equipment with and realized that if I hadn’t been able to pack lightly (3 day spring trip), that I would have had to check an additional bag, putting my checked bag fee up from a not so awful $50 to $120 extra (round-trip), almost as much as the Salt Lake City to Denver fare itself! I ski with an NTN telemark setup, which isn’t available for rent in many locations, so if I want to ski on gear I’m used to, I have to bring mine with. With that, here’s what I had written back in December:

There’s an interesting article regarding the airlines’ baggage fees and their effect on ski retailers in the Dec. 1, 2008 issue of Newsweek magazine. While it was neat to see my colleague quoted in the article (Krista), what really struck me about the article was the fact that it just concentrated on the bring the skis/rent the skis question and didn’t even touch on the fact that some people might decide to not even take a ski or snowboard trip this winter season.

Based upon early numbers from the 2009-2010 season, people took more ski vacations this year than last year. But, as airlines continue to add fees upon fees, will this become an obstacle to further increasing destination ski visitors in 2010-2011? I know I would think twice about booking a ski vacation on any airline except for Southwest thanks to their being the only airline to still include two checked bags in every fare!