Good locations but overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated - Anonymous employee Vail Resorts Employee Review

2.0
Oct 24, 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing location, lots of free/cheap outdoor gear and/or experiences, pretty good way to meet a lot of really cool people. Some of the managers are great and when guests are having fun their excitement can be contagious

Cons

Most seasonal jobs started at about $10/hr, even for those of us that weren't tipped. We were severly under staffed yet the resort took in record profits. Each individual employee was doing the work of two or three people, but there were no bonuses or overtime pay (until you worked 60 hours in a week). Everyone was super burnt out and half the staff quit, leading to even more work for those of us left and slower service for guests. The guests didn't seem to care who was actually at fault and took it out on us. Covid safety was also not great. There were some rules (including a property wide mask mandate) but they weren't enforced that well in public areas, and employee only spaces had no enforcement. Half the employees had masks under their chins at work the whole season and no one from management ever said or did anything. How could you expect guests to follow a mask mandate when half the employees don't? There were probably 50+ covid cases out of 300 or so employees (hard to know exactly since we were kept entirely in the dark and never told when we were potentially exposed, I only knew because I lived next to one of the quarantine buildings and saw how many people went in throughout the year). Despite that many cases, I never so much as saw a manager nicely ask an employee to wear their mask right. They're requiring employees for winter to be vaccinated, so at least if they still don't enforce the rules the overall risk will be lower.

Explore other reviews about Vail Resorts

5.0
Jun 30, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing company to work for! Appreciate the environment, the benefits.

Cons

Seasonal position which can make benefits a challenge.

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.

5
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