The Ski Bums sell and trade lift ticket vouchers and coupons on the net. The internet has taken "ticket brokering" from pro football tickets, to airline miles, and now ski lift ticket vouchers......

January 2 2004--Some people feel strongly that reselling tickets (or “scalping”) is a crime that should be punished. After all, many jurisdictions around the country have laws preventing people from reselling passes to popular sporting events, airline miles, and ski lift tickets.

We believe that the people who support these laws should take a good look at how ticket brokering (or trading) is being conducted on the Internet and elsewhere and the invaluable advertising and exposure that is generated for events, in this case the ski resorts themselves, the supposed “victims” of scalping.

Via the Internet, ticket reselling really is becoming a win-win situation for both skiers and resort management. After all, advertising brings skiers/boarders and those folks keep the resorts in business. We think that it the short run, this internet activity could hurt ski resorts' bottom line because it tends to push competition, and drive the price down. However, we also believe this activity is good because it creates exposure for the resorts, and this helps increase the numbers of people that get out on the slopes in a given year.

An auction site such as eBay often generates excitement when tickets are bid above face value. This is obvious when it comes to something like Super Bowl tickets which get bid up to ridiculously high amounts on auction sites, and then a slew of media coverage follows the prices on the sites and talks endlessly about how much they went for. But the same thing happens on a smaller scale with ski ticket vouchers. The price of a lift ticket on an auction site can be quite volatile because the season is short and it is dependent on weather. Bidding on auction sites adds excitement and advertising value for a ski resort just like it does for the Super Bowl. 

Collecting discounted ski ticket vouchers and reselling them, thereby promoting the best ski deals currently available around the country increases visibility. This naturally generates a tremendous amount of excitement and exposure for the resorts on the eve of the season and beyond.

Ticket brokering and trading is a real booming business on the Internet, especially through popular auction sites like eBay and Yahoo. Sporting events tickets are traded and scalped on a slew of sites in huge quantities.

Reselling any tickets at venue sites is usually against local ordinances, so localities can and do enforce ticket scalping laws at the venues themselves. In other words, you will often be arrested if you sell your tickets in front of the event ticket window (or anywhere in the area). However, time and again it has been shown that reselling tickets and vouchers is not illegal in many jurisdictions, and through many venues. You can resell your pro football tickets online, and you can sell your lift ticket vouchers online. You paid for both. It's your property. You really can not be dictated to on how you dispose with the property that you have purchased (or that you were "given"). The basic argument saying that reselling and scalping tickets is illegal just isn't always true.

Scalping is technically selling a ticket at higher than face value. In many local jurisdictions and venues it is legal to sell a ticket at face value, but it is not legal to sell it at greater than face value. Of course, when football, basketball, or baseball tickets (or ski ticket vouchers) are bid upon on eBay, they often go for over the face value, or over the amount that was originally paid for the ticket.

Reaction from skiers and snowboarders is clearly positive, but from the resort owners? Well, that is decidedly mixed. They don't really know what to think.

The Denver Post and Durango Herald of Colorado recently reported the angst that some resort managers feel over the selling and trading of lift tickets and vouchers on the Internet. The Durango Herald reported in a recent article (http://durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=out&article_path=/outdoors/out031130_1.htm) that a bulk of the 17,000 free lift tickets handed out by Crested Butte at the first Denver Nuggets game in November are now selling for $45 each on eBay.

"Obviously that's not in the spirit of any of these promotions," said Crested Butte spokeswoman Gina Kroft as reported in the Herald. “Particularly galling for resort operators is watching vacationing skiers pay $40 for a lift ticket and a coupon for four more discounted lift tickets that would have cost far more at the ticket window,” the article continued.

“Oh, that just drives John nuts,” Kroft said of Crested Butte CEO John Norton. “But it's hard to avoid, especially when you distribute as many as we did.”
 

The article also noted that Durango Mountain Resort officials don't have many problems with passes being sold or traded on the Internet.

“It's inevitable that one or two would wind up there,” Matt Skinner, the resort´s communications director told the Durango Herald. “If it became more of a problem we would have to re-examine more of our promotions.”

Not all resorts are “hip” to what could really benefit them in the long run. But they will likely come around eventually. Who wouldn´t want free advertising, after all?

See www.skibumsguide.com


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