The world’s largest mountain resort operator announced Thursday it would eliminate certain positions to save costs even as ski season approaches.
Vail Resorts plans to lay off under two percent of the company’s entire workforce as part of a two-year plan, according to a company news release. The anticipated layoffs would include “14 percent of its corporate workforce and less than 1 percent of the company’s operations workforce.”
Vail Resorts, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, employed about 7,600 year-round employees and 44,900-odd seasonal employees in the 2024 fiscal year which ended July 31, 2024, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
The company has approximately 40,200 employees, an IBISWorld estimate said. The layoffs could see approximately 800 employees depart.
The loss of jobs for at least 500 workers in a firm is one of two situations that signify a mass layoff, the U.S. Department of Labor said, citing the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. (RELATED: American Auto Giant Lays Off Hundreds Of US Workers)
The layoffs was part of “a two-year plan to transform the company for future growth and global expansion,” the news release revealed. “Impacted employees will have the opportunity to apply for open roles across the company.”
The layoffs would mainly affect management and and back-end staff as only only 0.2 percent of the frontline operational workforce staff would be affected, according to the news release.
“No matter how big or small the impact of position eliminations, we do not take lightly any decision that affects our team members,” CEO Kirsten Lynch said via the news release. “Our team members are the core of our mission to create an Experience of a Lifetime, and we have tremendous gratitude for their passion and commitment to our mission, our mountains, and our guests.”
“We consider our employee relations to be positive,” the company said in the SEC filing.
Vail Resorts’ net income for the 2024 fiscal year stood at $230.4 million, down from $268.1 million for the 2023 fiscal year, according to another of the company’s SEC filings.
Lynch blamed the company’s recent fiscal struggles on both a fall in demand for skiing occasioned by adverse climatic conditions across the company’s North American and Australian resort, and post-COVID business normalization, the second filing revealed.
Named among America’s Best Large Employers in 2022, Vail Resorts dropped off the list in 2023, according to Forbes. The company was also not included in the 2024 list.