An exclusive interview with Laurent Vanat, author of the International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism, reveals an industry that knows exactly what is wrong, has spent two decades failing to fix it, and is now running out of time.
More than 20 years ago, when Laurent Vanat attended one of his first international ski industry conferences after launching what would become the industry’s most widely cited global ski report, executives were already asking the same question they are asking today: what happens when the baby boomers stop skiing? “I remember it was already an issue then,” Vanat told SnowBrains in an exclusive interview. “We are only a few years away before the baby boomers leave, they said. And in fact, it didn’t happen. The boomers have been skiing longer than expected.”
Now, two decades later, the baby boomers are finally leaving — and the industry still lacks the solution it has been searching for since before the iPhone existed.
The Demographic Shift Is Accelerating
Annually-released NSAA demographic data tracking the median age of American skiers and snowboarders across the last thirteen seasons tells a story the industry can no longer defer. From 2012-13 through 2017-18, the median skier age held relatively steady at 30 to 31 years old. It edged up to 33 in 2018-19 and 2019-20. Then came the pandemic — and what followed was not a recovery but an acceleration. By 2020-21 the median age had already reached 32. By 2021-22 it jumped to 35. By 2023-24 it was 37. The 2024-25 season: 38. Data for 2025-26 is not yet available, but there is little in the current trajectory to suggest the trend is reversing.
In the last 13 seasons, the average American skier aged by eight years. Three of those years came before COVID, pushing the median from 30 to 33. After a brief dip during the pandemic itself, the acceleration sharpened dramatically — the median age has risen five years since 2020, from 33 to 38. By contrast, the median age of a downhill skier in America in the 1960s was 24. It took 50 years to grow the median age six years — it has now taken only five to grow the same amount. In some areas the aging is even more pronounced. In Utah, home to some of America’s most celebrated ski terrain, the average is already 48, according to a report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah.
It appears that COVID acted as an involuntary filter on the skiing population. Younger, occasional skiers — the ones who went once or twice a season and were never fully committed — had their habit interrupted for two years. Many simply did not restart it. The skiers who returned were disproportionately older, wealthier, and more deeply attached to the sport. The casual fringe fell away. The committed core remained. And the median age lurched upward as a result.
The demographic shift is not happening in isolation from the broader population trends in ski country itself. A May 2025 Colorado Sun investigation found that Colorado — after decades of being one of the youngest states in the nation, with a median age as low as 26.2 in 1970 — now has a median age of 38.5 and is among the fastest-aging states in the country. Lower birth rates, slowing migration, and longtime residents aging in place have fundamentally changed the demographics of the state that is home to Vail, Breckenridge, Aspen, and Steamboat. The average American skier is now 38. The average Coloradan is 38.5. The sport and the state it depends on most are aging in almost perfect lockstep — and neither trend shows signs of reversing.
The Problem With the Demographic Shift
The aging average is not simply a matter of optics. It reflects a fundamental economic vulnerability in how the sport sustains itself. According to NSAA data, baby boomers declined from 36.2% of all ski visitors to 21.3% over the past decade. The problem is not just that they are leaving — it is who is replacing them, and how. Research from RRC Associates found that it takes approximately two millennials to replace every baby boomer who hangs up their skis in terms of revenue generated. Young adults ski less frequently, take shorter trips, and spend less money on the mountain.
A 2016 Pique Newsmagazine investigation citing Canadian Ski Council research captures the specific mechanism of loss. Paul Pinchbeck, then president of the Canadian Ski Council, put it plainly: “As baby boomers move out of the sport, they’re taking an average of 12 or so skier visits per year with them. We’re replacing them with younger skiers who are skiing less frequently. Our research would suggest they’re skiing about six times a season.” The arithmetic is unforgiving. A boomer leaving the sport does not create a gap that one millennial fills. According to the Canadian Ski Council’s own research, it requires two millennials to fill each baby boomer’s boots in terms of spending power — and that assumes those two millennials actually show up.
NSAA data shows that approximately 56% of skiers and snowboarders first try the sport at age 10 or younger. Only 5% have their first on-snow experience at age 31 or older. The window for converting someone into a lifelong skier is narrow, it opens early, and it closes fast. A Bloomberg analysis published in February 2025 stresses the urgency: skiers aged 24 and under accounted for 41% of visits in 2013-14 but only 34% in 2023-24 — a seven percentage point decline in the sport’s youngest and most convertible cohort in a single decade.
The Industry Knows This. It Has Known This for Decades.
What makes Vanat’s assessment so pointed is not the data — it is the timeline. The NSAA’s Path to Growth report, published in 2017, identified the demographic challenge as one of eight key threats to the future of the ski industry. The Beginner Conversion Study launched in 2015 to understand why first-time skiers do not return — and was then paused in 2019. Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month was introduced in 2009.
The NSAA set a target of reaching 60 million annual US skier visits by 2025-26 — and the industry actually achieved it, surpassing 60 million visits in four of the last five seasons, peaking at 65.4 million in 2022-23. But those numbers deserve scrutiny. The rise of the Epic Pass and Ikon Pass gave committed, older skiers a compelling reason to ski more days per season — a $1,000 pass with unlimited access incentivises maximizing days on snow, and it is the boomer with time and money who is best positioned to do exactly that. Total visit numbers went up. But the demographic driving those numbers was already on the mountain. Meanwhile, the same pass model that rewarded loyalty raised the barrier to entry for anyone who had never skied before. A first-time skier does not buy a $1,000 season pass. They buy a day ticket — and at $250 to $300, that day ticket is now one of the most expensive entry points to any recreational sport in the country.
The result is a visit count that flatters the industry while obscuring its structural problem. The 2025-26 season’s weather-driven collapse to 52.6 million visits — the worst result in nearly two decades — is a reminder of what happens when the committed core cannot ski and the casual fringe was never rebuilt. High visit numbers were not evidence that the demographic problem was being solved. They were evidence that the boomer generation had not yet finished leaving.
“They have been trying to address this for at least 20 years,” Vanat said. “But they did not find the perfect solution, and it still remains an issue.”
The Boomer Buffer Is Running Out
For two decades, the industry has been shielded from the full force of its demographic problem by a single remarkable factor: baby boomers who simply refused to stop skiing. New ski technology — shaped skis, better snowmaking and grooming, high-speed chairlifts — helped the older generation continue skiing well past the age at which previous generations retired from the sport. Medical advances including artificial hips and knees extended skiing careers further still. The boomer who was supposed to hang up their skis at 65 is still on the mountain at 72. The industry did not solve its demographic problem. It deferred it — aided by a generation that proved more durable than anyone expected.
“One way or another,” Vanat said, “they will be out of the market. We have been able to postpone the exit of the baby boomers for a little time, but this will happen. And if you don’t have the solution to renew the customer base, it will be really tough.”
The signs are already visible. Vanat noted that the ski industry’s long-term financial sustainability increasingly depends on a shrinking cohort. As Jim Powell, Vice President of Marketing at the Park City Chamber/Bureau, told the Summit Daily: “Skiing is not a growing sport. We have a problem — the baby boomers are aging out. And they have been a big source of skier days.
That replacement has not materialised in sufficient numbers. The NSAA’s Generation Z Snow Sports Participation Study found that ski area offerings are “a near-perfect match for what Generation Z is typically seeking in a destination experience” — but that delivering on that promise requires focus on operations far beyond the slopes. Gen Z is more likely to be a first-timer, more likely to be renting equipment, and more likely to need a lesson. The market is there in theory. In practice, a $300 day ticket is not how you reach it.
The Solution the Industry Has Not Yet Built
When pressed on what would actually work, Vanat’s answer is consistent, specific, and largely unimplemented by the industry he has spent 18 years documenting. “If you expect people will just come to the mountains to learn, you need to make them learn skiing in the cities,” he said. “You need simulators, dry slopes, revolving carpet facilities. Something accessible to young, urban people who were not brought to the mountains by their parents.”
“What is lacking,” he added, “is someone who is interested to start it and turn it into a profitable and replicable business operation.”
The contrast with China is instructive. Vanat estimates at least 50 revolving carpet facilities exist across Chinese cities — many requiring roughly one million dollars in investment, a fraction of what a single high-speed chairlift costs. This is on top of the 66 indoor snow facilities that exist in China — the strongest growing ski market in the world. Patrick Thorne’s 2025 World Indoor Snow Centres Guide estimates that 50 million people learned to ski indoors in the last decade globally, the overwhelming majority of them in China. The United States, the world’s largest ski market in most years, has exactly one real-snow indoor ski facility: Big Snow at American Dream in New Jersey.
While critics will argue that a revolving carpet or indoor snow centre cannot replicate the experience of skiing on a real mountain, that argument misses the point entirely. Nobody is suggesting that a facility in downtown Chicago replaces Vail. The goal is a first experience — something that plants the seed early enough to matter. NSAA data shows that 56% of lifelong skiers first try the sport at age 10 or younger. Only 5% begin at age 31 or older. A revolving carpet in an urban mall does not need to be a ski resort. It needs to reach a 10-year-old before they find another sport.
The Netherlands — a flat, sea-level country of 18 million people where it rarely snows — has seven indoor ski centres. The United States, a country nearly 20 times the size, has one. The country that has the most to lose from demographic decline in skiing has invested the least in reaching skiers before they reach the mountain.
Signs of Life — But Is It Enough?
There are early indications that the industry’s two largest pass operators are beginning to acknowledge the demographic problem, at least in their pricing structures.
For 2026-27, Vail Resorts introduced a new “Young Adult” tier for the Epic Pass, cutting the price by 20% for skiers and snowboarders aged 13 to 30. The pass drops from $1,089 to $869 — and with an additional $175 “Turn in Your Ticket” credit available for those who bought a lift ticket in 2025-26, eligible young adults can bring the cost down to as little as $694. The Epic Local Pass for the same age group falls to $474. “The future of the sport depends on the next generation of skiers and riders, and it is our responsibility to create a more accessible pathway for them well into young adulthood,” Vail Resorts CEO Robert Katz said.
Alterra Mountain Company responded with the Ikon “Squad Pack” — groups of five people aged 23 to 28 who purchase Ikon Base Passes together save $199 each, bringing the price to $750 per person. The Ikon Pass also introduced a young adult tier at $999 for ages 13 to 22.
Both moves represent genuine acknowledgment of the problem. But both also illustrate its limits. A discounted pass for those who are already skiing is a very different proposition from a program that reaches someone who has never clicked into a binding. The Epic and Ikon initiatives lower the drawbridge for young adults who are already part of the skiing world. They do not build the road that leads to it.
Laurent Vanat believes that the opportunity lies elsewhere: in smaller, more affordable resorts that the mega-pass model has inadvertently positioned as the most accessible entry points in the market; in city-based facilities that reach urban youth on their own terms; and in a broader rethinking of what the first ski experience looks like and where it happens. None of those opportunities require a billion-dollar investment. They require a willingness to prioritize the next generation of skiers over the current season’s visit count. “I think they are more reactive to the issue of climate change than to the issue of getting new generation on the snow,” Vanat observed. Snowmaking and slope improvement, he noted, are investments the industry is obliged to make. Reaching new skiers is a choice. And for now, it remains largely unmade.
The 2024-25 NSAA data puts the average American skier at 38 years old. The boomer who has sustained this industry through decades of demographic warnings is still on the mountain. But not for much longer. And the clock, unlike the chairlift, does not stop at the end of the day.
