Why are tour operators so keen to sell lift passes?

A snowHead

Apologies if this is a stupid question but I really am puzzled as to why the ski tour operators are so keen to sell lift passes. I have been offered passes at 10% below ticket window and online prices and if we purchase the tickets from tour company, we get half-price ski carriage and half-price ski hire. I don't get it - where's the catch?

A snowHead

@Snowsartre, i guess they get bulk discounts. Also some resorts offer e.g. 2 for 1 at the start of the season. Pay in £s they will speculate on the exchange rate and offer you a crap rate

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Cash flow will be one advantage for them, perhaps a big thing at the moment for tour operators. They get your cash 12 weeks in advance, and probably pay for your slope passes after you have used them.

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@Snowsartre, bulk discounts, early purchase with the lift company who normally offer more than 10% for early purchase, and as @rob@rar, says cash flow.
The disadvantge for you are:
The tour compnay may Co** up. We had one company who started our 6 day passes the day we arrived. Then when we got to the lift on the last day the passes wouldn't work. I cannot get too cross with this, remember TOs are run by childen
By booking early you may get a better discount yourself
The pound may rise against the euro (stop laughing in the back row)
You have the hassle of waiting for the children going to get the passes for you, rolling up at 10:00 on the first day with your tickets
You do not get to talk to the lift office staff yourself to find out what is open and what the best deals are
For example family tickets may be available or other complex offers

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You won't pay more than at the pass office and avoid the hassle of going to get it yourself are 2 of the bigger bits to BS.

The former tends now to be true as punters can so easily price check online but it avoids the question of how much arbitrage they are making. I once had a niche TO that very honestly split the discount with the punters.

Re the hassle factor - erm like going to the ticket desk literally at the lift station where I'll start the day. And to avoid it the price is me sitting around sweating in my kit half the morning while your rep traipses round half the hotels in town with the added potential jeopardy he has cocked something up.......

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In low season the TOs get lift passes at 50% discount and make a healthy profit.
In high season not a lot of discount.

The total number of passes purchased calculates how many free passes they get for resort staff.

After all it is free

To add to the downsides listed by Dave Marmottes - a coupe of true stories encountered by me...

1) Winter 1989/90. Prepaid lift passes for 3 Adults. Self drive to Val D'Isere. Snowmageddon on arrival day - we made it, the rep plus all the other fly/coach punters didn't. They had 3 days board and lodging courtesy of "L'Armee de Terre" in various barracks. We had to pay for 3 one day lift passes because the reps weren't in resort to get our 2 week pre-paid ones. Took ages to get any refund.

2) Jan 2002 ish to Gressony. Prepaid lift passes for 4 adults. Virtually no snow on arrival - Just 3 runs and no links open - and no snow in the forecast. A few bus trips to Pila and Cervinia, requiring extra payments. If we hadn't pre-paid we wouldn't have bought a lift pass in resort. No refund from insurance because some runs were open.

3) Tignes 2005 ish. High pressure selling on the transfer bus (which I think has now stopped). "You won't get it any cheaper in resort" which was true-ish. However, 3% surcharge for using a credit card, and charged in GBP rather than EUR at a dodgy exchange rate. Declined to deal with them unless I was charged in EUR with no 3% surcharge (I've got Halifax Clarity and Santander Zero). A full hour of them arguing with me on the bus and on arrival in resort. Eventually they caved.

It's a long time since I used a TO but back then they used to add a bit on. They used to skim money whenever they could - well certainly the likes of Skiworld and Crystal would.

I am surprised people are saying they get a significant discount - not sure why? What's in it for the lift company? That is to say all the TO's for example will want/need to be in the 3V. Surely there is no need for the lift company to offer discounts.

And if a smaller lift company simply want to get more punters in surely they'd just offer the discount to everyone.

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I can see that in the past it would be useful to the lift company to have the TOs distributing a fair % of the lift passes as it would reduce the number of staff required at the ticket desks on Saturdays. But in recent years in Austria I've bought lift passes from the hotel I've been staying in. I'd never order in advance through a TO as I once had to cancel a trip for medical reasons. The TO refused to refund the lift passes even though they had a couple of weeks notice of my cancellation. My insurance covered the cost but it really bugged me that they just choose to make some extra profit from my misfortune.

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In the PdS resellers get bulk discount (10% for a small chalet, I guess more for bigger operations).
Some split this with the punters to encourage take up. In most resorts in the PdS the office is open lateish, so you can go and buy a pass the evening you arrive to avoid the queue on morning one.
However by far the best option IMHO is to buy online (you do not need a hands free card, as they will provide 1 for 1 euro extra), as you can benefit from big early purchase discounts.
Also if you pay with certain credit cards you get the ski insurance provided by the credit card.
This was really useful as last season one of our lads broke his back and was helicoptered to hospital. AIG underwrote the "free" ski insurance, which covered all the pisteur fees, the helicopter, the subsequent ambulances (to get home) and all of the hospital fee less an excess of 70 EUR.

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There are still a number of people for whom:
- It is their first (or one of the first) ski holidays and they aren't aware that they can do this themselves
- They intimidated by the thought of going to a French/Austrian pass office and speaking in broken English that they want a lift pass
- They are confused by all that French/Austrian lingo on the price-list, and don't realise that the different coloured writing underneath is actually the English translation!
- They still go to the TO's "Welcome Meeting"...... enough said!

You know it makes sense.

In the rare cases that I use TOs, I don't buy ski passes from them because:
1. It's never clear whether it includes the rescue insurance and if it doesn't then it's a walk to the ski pass office anyway
2. I don't know whether I will need local or domain ski pass - I make this decision last minute when I see what the conditions are and what links are open
3. I don't want to waste time waiting and/or looking for their rep
4. Ski passes offices are normally open late, especially the vending machines, so I can do it on arrival evening without any hassle

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

Back in the 80s this was where all the profit was for small independents as commission was cash based and often not declared wink

. Together with ski school and ski rental (up to 75% commission) there was a tidy amount to be made.

Interestingly Tignes do not do commission for new entrants to the market, so they don't bother with the hassle. Now there is no reduction for buying online I advise my mates to buy in resort so if bad weather is forecast they can save €50 and we can go to the pub, especially as there is little difference between a 5 day plus 1 or a 6 day pass.

A snowHead

@Snowsartre, if they offer you this deal at some point after you have signed up for the holiday it is probably worth taking (subject to various caveats above).

But if only offered as part of a travel / accommodation / hire package then it may not be all it seems. People are attacted by the thought of a 'deal', so a base price of £x and discount of £y on the lift pass will probably sell more holidays than a base price of £x-y-1 and paying full price for the pass - even though the latter is cheaper! The lift pass discount might really be an accommodation discount dressed up as something different.

This can particularly apply when TOs get desperate to fill empty beds close to departure dates, when they might offer apparently fantasic lift pass deals rather than discounted accommodation. This can have the advantage that headline accommodation prices remain more comparable, so reduces the chances of complaints when some customers find out how much less others in the same chalet / hotel have paid for the same holiday!

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Most likely just a holdover from the days prior to online purchase?

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I'm pretty sure scheme is like with ferries, if a transport company reaches a milestone of number X tickets sold, they get a healthier kickback at the end of the year. And even better rates to start with for the next season

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The more the TO sell the bigger discount they get from the pass office - from memory the threshold for the first discount was €5000 (but this was some years ago) then the discounts get bigger at each bracket. So by offering you a 10% discount they will absolutely meet the minimum threshold, after that they pocket the difference. So if they reach the 15% or 20% threashold they will pocket that 5% or 10%. They can also roll over benefits in to next year and get heavily discounted season passes for their season workers (sometimes they even get a few free season passes).

The TO will likely only pay at the end of the season therefore they get your lovely money sitting in their bank account earning interest, they will only pay out when the rate works in their favour too. So they win 3 times over.

I suppose the only catch is that by selling passes this way the Ski resort hands over responsibility for doing the paper work should you need to claim for lift closure on to the TO - so getting money back can be very difficult, if not impossible.

I just buy my passes online from the pass office and get them shipped by post. Much easier to claim back direct from the pass office for lift closure.

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Last time we got the TO to book us our ski passes and lessons. we got to the ski shop in good time to get skis and boots with the promise that we would be met there by the rep. Skis and boots sorted for us and the kids, no rep. Found a a Crystal rep, but not the one we were looking for, apparently lift passes have been delivered to apartments. Ski school about to start so run across snow to apartment lifts. Out of order, so back across the snow, and along the path to the stairs. Up 6 flights of stairs, now breathless. Got to apartment, pick up passes, run down stairs with envelope, hubby waiting with kids. Put passes in their pockets and leave them with their ski class. Take our own passes out of the envelope, only to find that they belong to another couple, identity and location unknown. Ah hah, beginners passes, so not only were they not ours, they wouldn't work on anything remotely useful. Ski class instructors radios beginners class, but is unable to locate the right class or the right couple. Hang around again trying to find rep............. rinse and repeat. We missed most of the first morning's lessons and no apology. After that I sorted skis boots and lift passes. At least I was in control of it if I cocked up and had no-one to blame but myself.

After all it is free

One thing that's also changed is the trend towards variable pricing. We encountered this last season, when on a couple of occasions, the price we paid on the day at the caisse was discounted up to 20% over the advertised price. This may narrow the gap between any discount from the TO versus buying it yourself.

Generally the intention of lift companies offering discounts to Tour Operators is to allow them to offer package deals at quiet times. Back when I ran a chalet business, we got as much as 40% off passes in early January. This allowed us to run "Free Lift Pass!" or "Half-Price Pass!" promotions if things were looking quiet. Means that we can offer the customer a big discount without taking too much off the bottom line. The resort's cost per pass sold is virtually zero so they're delighted to sell some passes they might not otherwise have sold and there are more people in resort frequenting bars, ski shops, restaurants, etc. So everyone's a winner.

Sometimes we were already busy so we didn't need to offer a promotion and we were quids-in on January passes, but that just balances out the times when we did and had to suck-up the cost.

For similar reasons, discount/commission in peak weeks was very small, as most people would already be busy.

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Our main hassle (from the TO side) used to be that the lift pass office would mix them up! We would then have to go back and sort it out on the guest's behalf. We got into the habit of checking them thoroughly at the office before we left. Of course, if we ever made a mistake (e.g. ordered one pass too many) that was a total disaster and it was impossible for them to refund! There was no system in place to allow this! Not even the same one that let them fix their own mistake.

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For sure there are all kinds of ulterior motives, but I find it sad that no-one has suggested that at least a part of the motivation of the the T.O. is simply to provide a service, and do a good job, and make the experience a little smoother for their valued client. God you're a cynical bunch Confused

Well said @shep. When we started out, the whole process was a mystery and it was great to have someone else sort it all out for us.

And I can see from the TO's point of view, if being a reseller of lift passes helps them get free season passes for staff, and the possibility of attractive low-season discounts, it is very much worth the extra hassle.

You know it makes sense.

@shep, agreed! Some of these stories about TOs must be old. We buy passes on the transfer bus in euros. They're the same price as advertised online and we know what we want, area not local etc. The rep either has a pile of them there or rings through to a rep in resort and they're at the hotel when we arrive. Yes, we've bought them online a couple of times with a discount but usually, going with a TO, we're too late for that. Also, quite often, the lift pass isn't sold at the nearest lift so if you arrive after the office closes it's a waste-of-time walk there and back in the morning. Why bother when someone else can do it?

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

@j b, @maggi, my experiences with TO's were some time ago and yes back when the process was a bit of a mystery. But I think these days there is less mystery and perhaps TO's have got better too. But I would be surprised if Crystal for example wasn't still run along the same lines it was 25 years ago.

A snowHead

The reason I've never bought my passes via the TO is that the TO's that I've used have never offer the additional insurance (carte neige or equivalent) and it can't be added retrospectively. And many of the 'reps' I've mentioned this to didn't even know that the insurance option even existed rolling eyes

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@spyderjon, is carte neige a benefit when already holding annual multi-trip insurance including off-piste skiing with/without a guide?

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Maggie, my 'Story' (as you put it), is only 5 years old, the model will not have drastically changed since then given it was the same model for the previous 5 years unchanged as I did it for my job.

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@Judwin, memories Laughing

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After all it is free

Have to say we enjoy the free equipment hire , and half price lift pass offer from our favourite TO
Its a genuine saving and the equipment is in the hotel in house shop and great quality.
Lift passes with reception at check in.
Its a genuine saving.
Its just a case af adding carre niege before first lift.

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Help!!

Why are tour operators so keen to sell lift passes?

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