Vail Resorts Is Switching Up How It Sells Lift Tickets—Here's How It Benefits Skiers

As the ski season arrives at mountains across the continent, Vail Resorts is unveiling a new discount aimed at more spontaneous skiers.

The deal, which applies at 12 of the company’s ski resorts, grants a discount averaging over 30% off tickets purchased a month or more in advance. 

They include headlining ski resorts like Vail Mountain, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Crested Butte, Park City Mountain, and Whistler Blackcomb. At some resorts, skiers can save over $100 per lift ticket, depending on the day, with the discount.

This is a stark change from Vail Resort's previous offering, in which skiers who missed out on an Epic Pass were often forced to pay top dollar for a single day of skiing. Now, as long as they plan that ski day four weeks in advance, they can save some money.

Vail Resorts also announced that skiers who purchase a lift ticket at its owned and operated North American mountains can apply up to $175 of what they paid towards buying a 2026-27 Epic Pass, provided they didn’t have a 2025-26 pass. 

Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz said in a release that until this winter, skiers had two ways to save at the company’s ski resorts: buy an Epic Pass or an Epic Day Pass ticket bundle, or save less by grabbing a lift ticket seven days in advance. “Our goal is to fill that gap,” he said.

“While we will always give the best deal to our Pass Holders, with this new discount, our hope is to make the sport more accessible for guests who aren’t thinking about skiing and snowboarding until winter arrives,” Katz continued. 

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The discount mirrors comments Katz, who was reinstated as CEO last May, made earlier this year during an earnings call.

There, he hinted that Vail Resorts was tweaking its lift ticket pricing strategy and acknowledged that the company hadn’t been focused enough on engaging people who weren’t ready to buy a pass before the start of the season.

The early-commitment approach, which has been adopted by many other major mountains and encourages people to buy season passes well before winter for the best deals, has pushed skiers away from pricey day tickets.

That’s reflected by the data Vail Resorts shared in the release.

Nearly 75% of the company’s visitors have season-long Epic Passes or Epic Day Passes bought before winter started. About 25% of visitation comes from people who buy lift tickets. Fewer than 2% use the old school method of buying lift tickets at the window.

What does the new discount look like in practice? A graphic shared by Vail Resorts used Vail Mountain as an example. There, off-peak window tickets cost $307. Buy a week ahead, and you’ll pay $259. The month-in-advance tickets cost $199.

The deal rollout follows the news that the company was giving Epic Pass holders 50% off tickets that can be shared with friends and family, another initiative Katz said was about boosting accessibility to skiing.