Buying and selling lift ticket vouchers

Is it Illegal?                                                                                           

What is a lift ticket worth?

It’s a question with no exact answer. Most resorts have a stated price for adults, juniors, children, and seniors respectively, but there are so many different pricing schemes now in the industry that the actual cost of a single-day ticket varies widely. Of course the real value of the lift ticket is highly dependent upon when and where.

Ski ticket vouchers are one way that locals and ski diehards get on the hill for cheap. The vouchers can be obtained primarily at ski shows, events, movies and sporting good store give-aways. What starving college student or family of five can afford to pay $65 each for tickets? For a lot of people, the cost of skiing is just out of their reach. And of those who can afford a cheaper season pass, who wants to go to the same old resort all the time?

In response to the rising cost of the sport, many people have figured out that collecting lift ticket vouchers is one of the best ways to get on the hill for cheap. These same folks have also figured out that if they have a few excess tickets collected at shows, they can try to sell them in the parking lot to the car parked next to theirs. Reselling these tickets is a fringe activity, analogous to the selling of frequent flyer miles or grocery coupon books. It's illegal to resell ticket vouchers in many jurisdictions around the country. Local ordinances and state laws covering many ski resorts prohibit the resale of lift tickets, and therefore resale is illegal in those jurisdictions. But it's also illegal to resell frequent flyer miles, sports tickets and grocery coupon books in most jurisdictions, though it is often done. In the case of lift ticket vouchers, the vouchers are always given out as part of a promotion and are sold by the resort to the promoter. You either have to pay for admittance to a show or event, or you have to buy a piece of expensive equipment. In other words, the voucher is never free. Nonetheless, it is the resorts that control the production of tickets and if the resorts really want to stop the reselling of lift-ticket vouchers they can. Selling the vouchers right at the resorts is something that is unlikely to lead to friendly relations with resort staff. Ticket brokers who sell frequent flyer miles don't stand in front of the airline ticket window selling them. Likewise, selling the lift ticket at the resort can't ever be the way to go and we highly discourage this approach. The only way to benefit both parties (resort and voucher holder) is if the ticket is sold where the resorts can benefit with free promotion/advertising.

Frequent flyer miles are usable only by the receiver of the miles and non-transferable by contract. Yet, in most jurisdictions, airlines themselves cannot enforce the resale because it is not illegal to make the sale everywhere. A lift ticket voucher is the same in that it is controlled by contract and therefore non-transferable.

Sport tickets might be a better example. At one time all college or professional football tickets had disclaimers supposedly preventing their resale. But the teams and networks could never stop the ticket brokers. Eventually, they decided to make this work for them and now ticket brokers are common, even though scalping itself (such as out in front of the stadium) is still illegal. Tickets are now even sold by pro teams directly to ticket brokers, often at a deep discount. Reselling lift tickets can't really become the "big business" that reselling of airline miles or football tickets has become. Lift ticket sales are much more closely controlled by resorts. It's a smaller market. There are relatively few ticket vouchers out there which can potentially be resold. It is not practical to try to amass great quantities of tickets for resale unless you are doing it in partnership with the resort itself. Several other reasons make large-scale reselling of vouchers highly unlikely, at least in the short-term. But on a smaller scale there is potential. An individual can go in and out of shows and collect enough tickets to make it worth the effort. If a lot of people are reselling vouchers, they could potentially resell so many tickets that they take away over-the-counter resort sales. But even if this was the case, the resorts still benefit in the long run from the process because of the promotion and advertising that will naturally go along with having to sell the tickets. Remember that the resorts have already "given" the tickets away. Not only will the resorts have the potential of ending up with some free advertising, they'll also have an opportunity to get the scalpers out of their parking if they work with the situation instead of against it. At some point, those parking lot sellers are sure to realize it's less risky and easier to sell the tickets elsewhere, such as the Internet.

Selling on the web (or in a newspaper classified) requires that the seller buy the advertising space. Our plan is to post HTML pages that we've developed for use in posting tickets on auction sites and web classified advertisements. Others will naturally follow suit and post ads on the auction sites with their own “new and improved” HTML web ads.

We believe the resorts benefit from this forum because if you're posting ads that draw attention you are adding value to the transaction and giving the resort some truly free advertising and promotion. People are paying big bucks right now to have others write up and post auction ads in HTML. Unfortunately, selling coupons and vouchers on the Internet could be short lived because resorts may eventually get upset about it. However, airlines don't like having their mileage resold, and most try to stop it even though airline miles are resold on eBay.com and in other places, and it's not at all clear that it is really illegal to resell airline miles even though the airlines claim it is. One would think that reselling lift ticket vouchers is somewhat less severe since the resorts are still getting people up on the hill that purchase consumable items from the resort and undoubtedly bring along friends of family to share in the experience.

There is no doubt that one great way to get cheap lift tickets (for now, anyway) is to get vouchers at ski shows and to find other ticket giveaways and promotions. At most shows, you can “get away with” going in a couple of times. After all, this normally requires that you pay an additional admission (so, obviously many shows don't care how many tickets you buy because they are trying to sell tickets). But if you are willing to do this you certainly can. In states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Colorado and Washington, there can be quite a few ski shows held on the eve of the season or even during the summer. If you went in a few times, or had a friend go in with you, you might be able to get a bunch of cheapies just by hitting one or two shows. There are also some freebies given out by ski shops (first in get lift tickets) and bunches of other contests. Granted, the tickets you get are going to be midweek and a lot of them have very limited dates so these tickets are not really that valuable. However, by correctly posting them on eBay or other websites you can always sell them, at least for something. Most people are probably not going to go to all the effort to post lift tickets on eBay and resell them. For most people, the idea really is to collect a few cheap tickets so they can use them. This is the best way to get cheap single day lift tickets - usually an even better way than trying to hit the resorts on the two-for-one days, and if you're a "starving student", it might be worth the risk. Invest a day or two in some shows and bring a few bucks with you so you can go through a couple of times. Be sure to check ahead to confirm that they are giving out tickets and buy as many as you can by going in as many times as possible. Often you'll get an early- or late-season, midweek lift ticket with a $40-$50 face value for $10. Utilizing this method, you might make up to $20 on each ticket you resell or you might give yourself a very cheap ticket that you can use, even if it's not peak season. That's a good return for no more than a few hours of your time.

In the past we've gone into shows with friends and collected a few hundred dollars worth of tickets. In some cases, we've sold tickets on eBay for $50 that cost us $8. You can't really practically collect that many lift tickets because you can only go in a few times, but if you can get $200 worth of tickets at $10 each, that's 20 tickets. If it's a large resort, those tickets might be worth $600-$800 on resale, so you potentially make $400-$600. In most cases it is a pretty easy trade for a healthy profit. Of course, it also depends on the shows in your area, and how cheap you're getting the tickets for relative to the actual face value. And you usually don't have to wait that long to turn the profit because you normally buy in October/November and sell in December/January (although sometimes you may wait until the end of the season). And just think how much money you could save yourself if you currently pay full price for lift tickets? It would certainly mean more days on the hill for you, a win-win situation for both ticket broker and resort. Your tickets may be early/late season and midweek, but it is amazing how many great days there are when nobody's on the slopes and how the blinding snowstorms seem to wind up to full strength on Saturday and Sunday when everyone is out there trying to have some fun.

To properly resell tickets or vouchers on the Internet you almost have to post an HTML ad for the ticket on eBay, which entails promoting the ticket and resort. The resort doesn't lose out in this situation. You get a lot of people to look at an ad for the resort just by posting the ticket with an okay-looking HTML ad on eBay or another auction site such as Yahoo. You can post a disclaimer in your advertisement such as "Buyers of any auction which includes tickets or vouchers are bidding for our services in locating, collecting and delivering any coupon or ticket voucher".

If you are a resort employee or operator reading this, the point we are making is that those tickets are really paid for by going to the show or event and supporting it. We are adding value to the resale transaction by advertising to resell something that the ski resort has already benefited from by selling to the promoter. In the end, the resort attains the same goal and does not lose a paying customer any more than by giving out the voucher in the first place. (Of course, this does not apply to an employee who is stealing the vouchers from his employer and reselling them. We are also not privy to the economics of the coupons/vouchers, so we can not say with certainty that the activity can be beneficial for resorts unless or until resorts are willing to open up and share some sales information.)

However, consider the following factors: - Selling the vouchers on eBay requires an ad and anywhere from thousands to millions of people around the world will see all those ski lift ticket ads. Therefore, the eBay ads generate additional exposure for the resort. - The vouchers are generally given out at ski shows or expos that have already-inflated prices for entry. The primary reason that most people go to the show or movie is to get a free lift ticket. - Reselling vouchers builds a market for lift tickets on eBay and on other web classifieds and auction sites where tickets are posted. Eventually, resorts should be able to take advantage of this market, if they can figure out how to work with the situation. - It encourages scalpers to get out of the parking lots and into a more legitimate format - It exposes resorts to a totally different set of patrons who may well become repeat customers

Be sure to see the next article called “Is it really illegal to resell lift ticket vouchers?”

Special Note: This information is not intended as legal advice. Reselling lift ticket vouchers is considered illegal in many jurisdictions. Consult your local municipality for information on laws governing your area.