Vail Resorts shifts focus to guest experience, targets Deer Valley level
Vail Resorts says it is done chasing more passes and will spend on guest experience instead, putting Park City Mountain in direct competition with Deer Valley.
Rob Katz said July 14 that Vail Resorts is no longer focused on selling multi-resort Epic Passes and is shifting to a new “Epic Experience” built around “delivering the best and most differentiated guest experience in skiing and riding.” For Park City Mountain, the question is whether the company can deliver shorter lift lines, steadier staffing, and more reliable mountain operations in Summit County while keeping skiers from looking across town to Deer Valley Resort.
Katz said Vail is “absolutely targeting” a level above Deer Valley and above its own current resorts by adding services and features that do not already exist in the ski industry. Park City Mountain sits at the center of Vail’s Utah strategy, and Deer Valley’s long-running reputation for high-touch service has set the standard that Vail is now openly challenging.
Vail spent years on expansion and restructuring. In September 2024, the company said it had grown over 10 years from 10 owned and operated mountain resorts to 42 across four countries, and it set a two-year transformation aimed at $100 million in annualized cost efficiencies by the end of fiscal 2026. That plan included position eliminations affecting less than 2% of the workforce, including 14% of corporate roles and less than 1% of operations roles.
In Park City, the new pitch lands beside a fresh round of capital spending and old disputes. On Jan. 27, 2026, Park City Mountain filed new conditional use permit applications to upgrade the Eagle and Silverlode Express lifts after years of legal conflict, including a Utah Court of Appeals ruling against the resort the previous August. The resort later won approval on May 28, 2026, and the proposal also calls for replacing the Cabriolet lift serving Canyons Village with a 10-person gondola.
The debate over what Vail should own, and how it should run Park City Mountain, has sharpened as well. Cloudflare co-founder and Park City resident Matthew Prince said in June that he would invest $500 million in the ski area if he bought it and pushed Vail toward an “asset-light” model. Prince said trust had frayed after last winter’s ski patrol strike and other operational disputes. Vail’s original purchase of Park City Mountain Resort on Sept. 11, 2014 for $182.5 million in cash tied the company to a promise to join Park City Mountain and Canyons into a 7,000-acre mega-resort.
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