RESORT PROFILE
less busy and elicits the feeling of more wide-open runs to
ski down.
“We’re not making people ride together to maximize lift
capacity. What’s ended up happening is more people are
waiting in lift lines versus being on the hill skiing, so it’s
opened up some of the runs a little bit, and we’ve seen a small
decrease in collisions and other accidents on the hill usually
caused by crowding,” said Williams.
For Purgatory’s staff, it’s a lot of work to maintain social
distancing and sanitize more frequently while also maintaining
50 percent capacity, but they were able to do it all successfully
this past season. The pandemic has forced Purgatory to
examine where it can be more efficient to take its services
into the future much sooner than it would have otherwise.
“Last summer, being faced with capacity limitations, we
decided to change the product mix of the types of activities
we offered and even the timeframe we offered them in, so we
divided our summer operating day in half and sold a morning
session and an afternoon session. That worked so well, we’re
going to continue to do that whether there’s Covid this summer
or not,” said Rathbun.
Like other businesses, Covid-19 has forced Purgatory to
embrace technology at a much faster rate, but they’ve taken
it further than just allowing guests to book their ski experi-
10 April 2021 | snowopsmag.com
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