Q: Do younger passholders ski more days each season than older passholders?

Right before Thanksgiving we looked a season pass volume by age with the promise we’d dig a bit deeper. Today, we’re backing up that promise with a closer look at pass usage. When it comes to days on the mountain each year, does the younger crowd beat their older counterparts? Here’s what we found.

The Goods
We used the same group of passholders from our volume analysis to find our answer. As a refresher, that included 20 season/resort combinations from resorts all across the country and over 250,000 season passholders. This time, we simply added their days skied each season into the mix. On the y-axis is total days skied each season with age on the x-axis.

Aside from similar dips around the early 20’s and again in the mid-30’s, pass usage actual climbs with age. Right around the average U.S. retirement age (61), there’s a clear uptick in days skied each season. Once we hit about 75, however, the data became a little too sparse to draw any major conclusions.

What This Means
Simply put, on average, older season passholders get more out of their passes than younger skiers by a pretty solid margin. However, this may not lead to higher renewal rates like you’d normally see with increased use because of the simultaneous dropoff in participants with age.

As we often say, this may be a good jumping off point to dig into your own data by asking how else older passholders differ. Do they book more lodging? Do they dine on-mountain more? Do they take fewer runs? Are they more likely to pay for premium parking? We don’t have time to answer them all here, but each is definitely worth a closer look.

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