Vail Resorts Reviews

Pros

Most co-workers easy to work with
Free Starbucks coffee
Free granola bars
Work environment is relatively new
Free ski pass

Cons

Compensation
  -Salary - Pay for non-management positions is 15-20% lower than market (managers are being paid 50% or more than direct reports)
  -Time-off - Holidays come out of employee's PTO; PTO is very slow to accrue for employees just starting (i.e. < 5 years at company)
  -Medical - Limited medical plans for employees (i.e. only one plan)

Work Environment
  -Cramped cubes and getting worse; Company is more concerned about cost of leasing space than worker productivity

Technology
  -Company does not give high quality technology to development staff
  -Fails to upgrade IT infrastructure because of cost

Employee Development
  -Consistently hire externally rather than promote from within
  -Internal training options are nearly non-existent
  -Consistently fail to cultivate talented employees
  -Training guidelines and allocation of training money is opaque process
  -Review process that is currently in place is used to push employees' salary into bell curve regardless of an individual's true performance

Management Communication
  -Upper management puts on charade to gather employees' input, but almost all decisions are foregone conclusions and employee input is not used.
  -Communication for large changes is typically vague in order to hide negative impacts to employees until the last minute (e.g. change in health care plan)
  -Management fails to answer direct questions from employees

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your employees like the are an asset instead of consistently viewing them as a cost and compensate them like they deserve to be instead of being cheap.

Pros

You get a free pass on the mountain and you get a free pass on the mountain. Usually the people you work with the closest are super friendly and fun people.

Cons

You don't receive any benefits as a full time instructor. The pay you receive is negligible in comparison to the amount the consumer is paying to the resort. The resort will overbook your classes making it impossible to give a great and respectable lesson. They overcharge for private lessons to make a larger profit off of your hard work without dishing out a reward.

Advice to Senior Management

The direct management of the Ski and Ride School at Vail Resorts is done well but the higher corporate executives are only interested in the numbers.

Pros

ski-pass, affordable housing, lots of food

Cons

hard-work is not rewarded, standing around and doing literally nothing is overlooked

Pros

Free season pass and nice co-workers was about it.

Cons

It is supposed to be a full-time position, expect to only get 10-20 though starting out and when its not busy with 30 prob being the max. Shifts are pretty much never 8 hours. People get sent home as soon as the morning rush is over. I was scheduled 12 days in a row (short shifts) with no overtime because the way the days fell on the workweek. They mention that the company offers benefits 401k etc this won't apply to your position.

Pros

Ski Pass, ski industry, locations

Cons

low pay, company does very little to recognize value employees, high turnover, very little vacation

Pros

ski pass, location, awesome co-workers

Cons

work holidays, work so much it's hard to get use of your pass

Pros

Somewhat flexible hours, good people (although not necessarily good workers), free ski passes for family, and it's a job in a bad economy.

Cons

Since the corporate division moved from the mountains to Broomfield in June 2010, turnover has been terrible. The initial departure of 40-60% of staff wasn't surprising, but people have been consistently leaving since that initial event. In the last several months, I would estimate a person per week has left from our floor.

This has left a huge void in the company as people are being promoted due to existence and not ability, and no one in upper management has dared to bring up the issue in an all staff setting. Instead, they stick to the talking points of "we are average in compensation and benefits" and "the employee survey showed employees are happy!" even though that survey included seasonal employees who just wanted the free pass.

As to why people are leaving, compensation is a big reason, particularly that there is no additional compensation beyond a paycheck (no bonuses, no profit sharing, no "good job" Starbucks gift certificates). Benefits are completely average with health, dental, 401k (0.5% match up to 2%), and time off amounting to 2wk vacation and 8d holidays, but lumped into a Paid Time Off (PTO) bucket that makes it look like we're getting more. With the corporate environment like it is and upper management playing mute, people are jumping for other companies that offer even a day more of vacation time.

Advice to Senior Management

Talk to us! Admit that there is an issue in the company and tell us what you have planned to make things better. If we think that nothing is going to change, we will leave.

Pros

Skiing and Mountain Biking
Working in an industry that supports your hobbies
Opporotunities for promotions

Cons

Bad pay
Promotions dramatically cut in to time for hobbies, which is the reason you'd work here.

Advice to Senior Management

Unrealistic expectations of staff relative to their pay.

Pros

good pay- high hourly rate plus commission and tips

Cons

some management was not skilled enough to successfully manage employees and very very condescending
no teamwork
unreasonable expectations
targeted certain employees and gave unreasonable tasks for them to complete that weren't given to employees of the same rank/job
priority given to full time employees
no praise for hard work
HR is hard to contact and then they do very little to react to your complaint (unless your contact corporate HR and then keystone HR will respond)
scheduling was unfair- year round employees and the employees the managers favored got the best shifts and the other employees got the worst ones--aka ones during skiing hours

Advice to Senior Management

more training on how to deal with different types of people
more praise and recognition for hard work

Pros

Perks are nice to have

Cons

Salary is below market, benefits cost more, expectations are inconsistent amongst groups