THREDBO general manager Stuart Diver was asked for his thoughts on the start to the 2020 season, read on for the interview.

When the NSW government advised you had to reduce numbers to open, you had no choice but look at other options as you could not meet the demand anyway?
Yes, correct, capacity restraints were the logical way for the resorts to be able to open. Obviously, we sell tickets and it was the best alternative of constraining capacity, so all resorts agreed we would limit the number of tickets available each day.

Could you not have reduced capacity by keeping season pass and registering season passes?
No, because the issue you have is, we are not providing season pass holders to be able to ride every day of the season as they would have liked. We simply can’t fit the number of season pass holders within those capacity restraints regardless of, and that is without selling another ticket into the marketplace. The only option for us was to refund that and come up with another discount approach for our season pass holders.

The whole ticket purchasing process, it didn’t work out well for the consumers.
Most definitely. I am as disappointed and as frustrated as many of our Thredbo guests are but hopefully, we have rectified those issues and moving forward it will be a much smoother experience for everyone. Guest services and my team in Thredbo did an amazing job in pulling it back and contacting guests and making sure we looked after as many people as we could.

You were never going to able to meet that demand, were there always going to be more guests than you had capacity for?
Absolutely, just look at school holidays – there was three times the demand for what tickets were available. Unfortunately, that means people are always going to miss out.

Do you have any empathy, have you contacted the accommodation providers who may have lost bookings due to guests not being able to acquire tickets?
Absolutely, we are working very closely with all accommodation providers in Thredbo – the main commercial ones to make sure their guests who have accommodation bookings have access to tickets if there is passes still available. But sadly, for a resort the size of Thredbo, there is just not enough tickets to go around, so people who have booked accommodation are going to miss out unfortunately, especially during that school holidays period.

Now you have gone to the market with your new ticket structure and with the NSW restrictions changing rapidly and starting to open, does this change your lift ticket structure for after July school holidays going into August?
No not at all. We said our strategies are all based about being able to ramp up whenever we want. We can limit as required by the government and ramp up as needed. If restrictions ease and conditions change, I have always said we will definitely be able to release more passes into the market and that was always our intention and is why I believe our strategy is a really good one.

For season pass holders who ski say more than 20 days, it is going to cost them more. What do you say to all those people disappointed they can’t ski as much as they want?
If you actually look at it, the season pass discounts we are offering are unbelievably generous especially for those who ski for more than 20 days and we have a lot of really positive feedback in that regard. Thredbo has done everything they can within the government restrictions of COVID 19 to make sure our season pass holders are looked after. If more days are released the more days they ski and as you know, receiving huge discounts. Sure, it may cost a little bit more, but we are in very, very changed times, very challenging conditions and Thredbo is doing absolutely everything to look after our stake holders to make sure everyone gets an opportunity to ski this year.

Those capacity restrictions are based around the size of the mountain facilities and Thredbo does not have as much overall terrain in hectares as bigger resorts, that is obviously a factor?
Yes 100%. You have to be very clear that Thredbo is of the firm belief that we were unable to service our season pass holders because we were unable to give our season pass holders unlimited access throughout the entire season to the mountain. So regardless if restrictions eased, we based our model on the fact that we needed to be able to provide our season pass holders with surety that they could come on a certain day and they could ski and that is what I believe the Thredbo model provides.