I think what that broad set of data is a poor marker as its opaque in its accuracy and has no ability to drill down further into the data. It is a good starter point - and I do appreciate a counter information to my theory.

1. Those are gross volume but the distribution of visits per location has changed dramatically as a result of the Ikon and Epic passes - ie local demand pressure in certain localities. 2. What is the distribution of one time buyers versus season pass holders? 3. International vs domestic? 4. Over that time period how many people have actually left ski resorts and started to backcountry ski instead (a not insignificant amount) - which is demand that would be unaccounted for. 5. The other challenge with skiing is it is highly weather dependent - so a bad snow year will limit the amount of visits. I imagine if you were to divy up this plot by states - there would be a strong correlation with big snow years in California and large movements in the numbers merely as a function of scale.

I’ll follow up and say I think one place that the networked season passes might be driving on the real estate front is that I think they make it less attractive for “locals” to get started skiing and to stay local. The massive increase in day pass prices means where once someone in Seattle, Sacramento or Denver might just try a few days skiing to see if they like it, they now have to make a much more major commitment up front to get into the sport. Those “locals” would just drive in an hour or two rather than rent a ski town property.

The multi resort passes make it much more attractive to take a dedicated ski vacation than just check out a different nearby resort.