I have a funny feeling that in 5 or 10 years, unless I’m living extremely close to a ski area, my family will likely load up on some equivalent of a 4-pack and then seek out a few, well planned weekends with great weather and soft snow to spend on the mountain each winter.

Even when my local mountain didn’t offer a 4-pack, my behavior or spending patterns would have often made one an ideal fit.

As such, I wanted to get a quick snapshot of how 4-packs were used by resorts and how they bridged the gap between day tickets and season passes.

Basic Numbers
Let’s start with some context. These numbers come from a group of 10 resorts. So the first numbers I’ll share are averages from that group.

Non-Holiday, Adult, Weekend Ticket Rate
Average: $84.20
Not all resorts have weekday rates and not all resorts have holiday rates, so this seemed to be the best representation of price.

Adult, Top Tier Season Pass
Average: $788.10
I used top-tier because virtually all 4-packs can be used anytime with no blackout days.

Pass Price / Day Rate
Average: 9.4 days
Obviously some are much higher, others incredibly low (looking at you, CO).

Okay, now let’s get into the 4-pack numbers for this group.

4-Pack Price
Average: $196.00
About what you’d expect.

Price / Day
Average: $49.00
Just doing the “price / 4” math so you don’t have to.

Savings ($)
Average: $35.20
Higher than I expected honestly.

Savings (%)
Average: 41.2%
Again, a little higher than I expected.

4-Pack Price / Season Pass Price
Average: 24.8%
In other words, you could ski 16 days on these products before a season pass is a better option.

We tend to use window rate as a benchmark for season pass value, but if you compare pass prices to multi-ticket prices the group that needs a season pass to get the best deal suddenly shrinks, at least on the aggregate.

But that’s a message the marketer has control over.

Alternatives
One alternative I wanted to benchmark these numbers against was advanced purchase lift tickets.

The last time I checked in with Liftopia on 30+ day discounts it was about 31%:

So the 4-pack certainly comes out on top when looking at averages.

A Few Notes
There were a few things I wanted to point out before wrapping up this analysis.

First, Complexity
I’ve said this a dozen times, but it’s incredible how complex lift ticket and season pass pricing has become. I hope that it’s working because complexity and decision making has never been a great combo when the goal is getting humans to do something. Even more tricky, complexity also makes it significantly harder to know if it’s working in the first place.

Second, Shared Tactics
I really liked how Winter Park had a renewal option for 4-packs. That’s a huge part of season pass sales, so it makes a lot of sense to offer it to the tier below and capitalize on the power of streaks even though this approach is rarely used. Downside? It adds another layer of complexity to pricing.

Third, Other Differences
One thing I didn’t account for was the fact that some of these tickets are only sold during the fall. It’s an interesting move that I like in some ways (partly because it’s simple), but question in others when you consider the casual skier that doesn’t get wrapped up in labor day hype like the rest of us.

All in all, it’s a great bridge between season passes and day tickets. This analysis may not be totally useful today, but something to tuck away for the next time the topic comes up.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.