Smoke and mirrors - Director Level Vail Resorts Employee Review

1.0
Dec 23, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

$400 Ski Pass? Sexy company image amongst peers.

Cons

The company tag line is experience of a lifetime, but it is not something they offer to employees, just paying guests. -No focus on bench strength and career development. -PTO is awful for a resort company: It amounts to 17 days of pto, but you do not get the 11 Federal Holidays, which means that a state or federal employee receives 4 more pto days (2 weeks + 11 Fed Holidays = 21 days off ) than a Vail Resort employee that boasts a great work/life balance. Sham. -Pay is a solid 15-20% below competition across the board. -Leadership has an old guard in place in my division that is completely ineffective and has been holding onto people that are not productive, while firing some of their best people. New ideas and initiatives are few and far between as a large portion of leadership is fine with status quo and not rocking the boat.

Explore other reviews about Vail Resorts

5.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great fun job with good people

Cons

No real room for growth

2.0
May 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Most people are smart, passionate, and enjoyable to work with and be around. - Fairly frequent opportunities for development and advancement through the internal job board. - Nice perks if you're into skiing or riding.

Cons

- There's an unspoken expectation to regularly work significantly more hours because the majority of employees are very passionate about the ski and ride industry, which isn't great for work life balance. There's not much down time either; you're either hustling in season or hustling to prepare for the next season. - Climate change poses a significant threat to the future of the company. The season pass model mitigates some of the impacts, but not as much as senior leadership asserts. And, since bonuses are tied to company results, you can end up working super hard all year and still end up getting half of your bonus target due to uncontrollable weather conditions. - The culture has taken a serious hit since enterprise transformation work began. Lots of people are constantly stressed out and the atmosphere in the office is depressing. - Most of the time, it feels like senior leadership makes decisions in a vacuum without consulting any of the people that would be responsible for the downstream work associated with the decision. For example, I've seen senior leaders decide on a savings target multiple times without consulting the experts, who then have to scramble to figure out how to make it work. It creates chaos and negatively impacts morale. - This organization has a wordsmithing problem. I've never worked at a company that spends such an inordinate amount of time on the framing of a message compared to the actual substance of the message.

3
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