Vail Resorts Fires DEI CEO Correction: She Resigned

Kirsten Lynch - The Vail Board Had Enough of Her

Kirsten Lynch, pictured, was replaced by the Vail Board of Directors following the past ski season by a new CEO, a man. But not really a new guy.

Vail Resorts has, somewhat surprisingly, reinstated former CEO Rob Katz. They had had enough with woke leadership.

In short order, Kirsten Lynch ran the Vail stock price to a 9 year low, saw major lift failures, and had holiday operations plagued by the Park City ski patrol strikes. All leading to falling profits. The customer experiences that were epic at Vail Resorts were too often a fail in 2024-2025.

Has skiing got too expensive, and are there serious anti-trust monopoly like profits being made since the introduction of ICON and EPIC season passes? Has collusion resulted in the purchase. prices of day ski lift tickets becoming super expensive? State Attorney Generals can team up to fight Trump, but where are they on these issues -- possible price fixing?

In fact this year, Vail's EPIC pass sales have dropped off for the first time since they were introduced. Forcing the purchase of next year's pass, this year needs to be reviewed.

HE 's skeleton sports department and coverage is new and will be restricted until the fall football season when Gabe Whitley is back. Yet, HE seems to be the only Indiana Media outlet reporting on this major winter sports story out of the Rocky Mountains where many Hoosiers visit during the winter months. Indiana has a large number of snow skiers and annual EPIC pass purchasers every year even though the state has more cornfields covered with snowthan ski slopes  in the winter.

From an Indiana public policy POV, many years ago, the state property tax laws effectively put Ski Valley in LaPorte County and the Pines Ski in Porter County out of business. Perhaps the largest in the state's northern snow belt, Mt. Wawasee in Kossciusko County, ceased operation for a similar reason.

See if there was a bad snow year, these enterprises/small businesses needed to have no property taxes due, or that huge expense should have been tied to their sales, not acreage. Indiana failed.

Under Indiana under Gov. Evan Bayh, he failed to follow the lead of other states that replaced real estate taxes on tourist attractions like ski resorts with a lift ticket sales tax paid by consumers in lieu of land taxes. This fail resulted in the shuttering of an entire industry in the state. Golf courses, though not snow or as weather dependent to the same extent, and having a much longer season could benefit from a similar type of tax preference.

As always, leadership matters as Vail learned, too. Indiana leaders never cared much about snow skiing or ski tourism, and likely never will -- too flat here. But also since there are still a couple of ski areas reachable from Indianapolis to the south that may be all that matters to the power brokers here. The people upstate, well, they will just have to go skiing in Michigan or Colorado. In the past, Swiss Valley in Jones, Michigan has offered Sunday family learn to ski discounts with rentals and professional ski instruction included in the package.

Nevertheless, Bendix Woods County Park in western St. Joseph County may want to consider reopening its prior downhill ski slopes or renting that part of the park's space in the future to an outside operator as a winter amenity for locals with the large population expected and the housing boom happening in nearby New Carlisle, Indiana.