Best in the West Lift Ticket Deals (post turkey day)

Hey everyone,  hope you had a great holiday, it sure was nice to have some turkey, stuffing, and all things calorie-heavy last week.

While the east coast is still waiting on a cold snap and more snow, there are many areas out west that have great ski conditions, and below are some of the best discount lift ticket deals available this week.  There are a bunch of new resorts, and keep an eye on our site as more will be loading in the next week or two.

Colorado Lift Ticket Deals

• Arapahoe Basin lift tickets – Tuesday 12/01 for $20 (59% off)
• Copper Mountain lift tickets – Tuesday through Friday for $54.99 (15% off)
• Crested Butte lift tickets – All dates until 12/16 for $45.99 (22% off)
• Keystone Ticket + $15 Lunch Credit until 12/20 for $60 (33% off)
• Loveland lift tickets – All dates until 12/11 for $29.99 (35% off)
• Monarch lift tickets – Midweek for $43.99 (18% off)
• Ski Cooper lift tickets – All dates for the next few weeks for $34.99 (17% off)
• Sunlight lift tickets – Friday the 4th for $28.99 (42% off)
• Winter Park lift tickets – Friday the 4th for $75 (18% off)

Utah Lift Ticket Deals

• Brighton lift tickets – Most dates this week for $39.99 (31% off)
• Snowbird Early Bird Special – Most dates through December 24th for $39.99 (44% off)
• Solitude lift tickets – midweek for $49.99, weekend for $52.99 (19% off)
• The Canyons lift tickets – until 12/18 for $54.99 (30% off)

Idaho Lift Tickets

• Sun Valley lift tickets – most dates for $49.99 (11% off)

Wyoming Lift Tickets

• Grand Targhee lift tickets – most dates in Dec, $23-28.99 (42% off)
• Snow King lift tickets – Wednesday 12/9 for $15 (25% off)

New Mexico Lift Tickets

• Angel Fire lift tickets – most dates after 12/12 for $49.99 (15% off)
• Red River lift tickets – 12/4-12/6 for $35 (43% off)
• Sipapu lift tickets – Saturday 12/5 for $15 (62% off)

California Lift Tickets (including So Cal and Lake Tahoe)

• Alpine Meadows lift tickets – 12/5 and 12/6 for $49.99 (28% off)
• Mt. Baldy lift tickets – Tuesday 12/1 for $30.99 (43% off)
• Sierra Summit intro package – Saturday 12/5 for $57 (33% off)
• Homewood – Saturday 12/12 for $29.99 (45% off)
• Diamond Peak lift tickets – Saturday 12/12 for $39.99 (18% off)

Alberta lift tickets and British Columbia lift tickets

• Banff, Lake Louise, and Sunshine lift tickets – most dates through December for $66 (save 13%)
• Big White lift tickets – Saturday the 5th for $55 (18% off)
• Silver Star lift tickets – Saturday the 5th for $55 (18% off)

Have fun out there!

 

Liftopia on Techcrunch

So we have been based in the Bay Area for the entire life span of Liftopia.  Throughout that time, we have attended various entrepreneurial events down in the valley, and inevitably have seen the rise of many neat companies.  One of the great wins out in SV, is to be featured in Techcrunch, and we are happy to say Liftopia received a great writeup yesterday.

Jason Kincaid does an awesome job explaining how Liftopia functions, and helps folks really understand the story behind our company’s growth.  It is great to have Jason accurately portray our model, despite not being a skier himself.  This makes us feel comfortable that our business makes sense, and hopefully we can turn Jason in to a skier or snowboarder at some point soon (come on, it isnt so bad to be up in the mountains!).

Obviously getting written up here is far from being a stamp of success (one can note their long list of written-about-but-now-defunct companies in their Deadpool).  It is, however, great to have a tech blog recognize that we can be innovative in a space that isnt exactly considered to be cutting edge.  We still have a lot of work to do, but we hope we can help broaden the business for ski companies, and bring more people in to the sport.  Great job Jason, let us know if you ever want to get out on the snow with us.

Liftopia opens up all its lift ticket deals…

So we have wanted to do this for a while…  While we were back working at Hotwire.com, we noticed a funny thing.  Online travel sites, ski sites, gear sites, etc, all have an interesting challenge – making customers aware of the best deals available on the site.

This is where deal feeds can be very helpful, as they open up a larger set of a companies inventory without requiring customers to “easter egg hunt” around for the best deals.  There are some interesting strategies to get best deals across, a couple of our favorites are Steepandcheap.com and Woot.com (both function on a similar model).  Steepandcheap (a Backcountry.com subsidiary) and Woot.com, list one deal at a time until that deal sells out.  This allows them to focus on one piece of distressed inventory for customers, and both companies make great use of deal feeds to broadcast these around.

In our case, we have some amazing lift ticket and ski package deals, however it is difficult to get all of those deals across to our customer base.

So we decided to just open up our deals to you via a massive set of RSS and HTML lift ticket deal feeds.  Now, that page may not look too sharp, but it holds a HUGE amount of data that doesnt require much digging around the Liftopia site.  You can slice and dice this data as you like, whether you want an RSS feed of all the best lift ticket deals at a time (these are the best deals for each of our resort products available in the next two weeks, based on % savings), by region (again best deal in next two weeks per resort) or by resort.  Resort pages, like this RSS feed for Wildcat, list all deals for the rest of the season.

You can browse all of the regions’ and resorts’ lift ticket feeds, or you can pick your favorite regions/resorts and keep an eye on them.

So what does this mean?  Well, it means that you can have a better handle on Liftopia ticket deals for the places you are interested in.  These feeds update daily, so when resorts adjust price points, you are the first to see them.  Want a quick list of the best deals in New England? Check out the RSS or HTML deal feed for New England. Who knows, maybe you will do a better job organizing these deals than we do!

We hope this makes finding deals easier on Liftopia, and please let us know if you have any feedback.

At the bottom, but it is the New York Times, so we’ll take it…

This just in, Liftopia got a little mention in the New York Times today!

Take a look here, http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/travel/escapes/19ski.html

Still a lot of work to do, but it is great being in such an awesome publication.

A snapshot of early season discount lift tickets…

Sooooo, since the season is off to a start, here are some of the latest and greatest deals on discount lift tickets we have on our site.

Utah Ski Resorts
Snowbird: $39.99 (36-44% off) from now until Dec 25th.
Park City: $29.99/$39.99 first couple weeks of Dec
The Canyons: $43.99 (about 40% off) most dates in Dec

NY/NJ
Windham: $23.99 (54% off) Dec 7-25th
Whiteface: 31-37% off all of December

New England
Smuggs: $28.99 (34% off)for Turkey day weekend and many deals in Dec
Ragged: $23.99 (51% off), Turkey day weekend through Dec 24th
Crotched: $39.99 (22% off) Turkey day weekend
Gunstock: $15 (69% off) first weekend in Dec
Waterville Valley: 31% off most weekdays, 12-14% off weekends in Dec
Wildcat, $28.99 (55% off) most sundays all season

New Mexico
Sipapu: $4.99, this weekend…
Taos: 14% off starting Dec 20th
Angel Fire: 15% off starting Dec 20th

Colorado
Crested Butte: 17-19% off first two weeks in Dec
Ski Cooper: 14% off weekends in Dec
Keystone, lift ticket + rental package: $99, now until Dec 13th
A-basin: 10-20% off most dates

MI
Caberfae Peaks: $12 first weekend in Dec

PA
Shawnee Mtn: $21.99 (56% off) first weekend in Dec

In case you arent in shape for ski season yet…

Get in shape!  While many places are waiting to open, the season is upon us!

Check out this video from Snowbird’s opening weekend, not too shabby.

Speaking of deals…

To follow up on our post yesterday about finding skiing and snowboarding deals, there was another fun (for us at least) mention of Liftopia today in the press.

USA Today ran a great article that is right in line with how we are all feeling due to the economy’s woes.  Focusing on budget travel sites, Laura Bly included Liftopia in a long list of awesome websites to help you stay out enjoying yourself without killing your budget.  It is a big honor for us to be listed in the same article as our alma mater, Hotwire, as it is a great service (along with the many other listed) to help people stay sane and have fun while the economy kicks us in the butt.

We obviously still have a ways to go to become what we eventually hope to be (basically helping resorts sell more tickets and helping you get out and ski or ride more), but it is good to be making a little progress towards that goal.

Belated Liftopia Perspective #5, St. Anton, Austria

OK, we have slacked a little bit…  We have been traveling so much all over that we are playing a little catch up with our series on places we are visiting, so you may see a flurry of them this week (finally have a chance to breath!).

Crossing the border in to Austria, St. Anton is somewhat of a legendary ski destination, however in the summer time is very quiet.  Known for scores of Europeans dancing on tables at “The Krazy Kangaroo” and other local haunts, this town has a lot of charm aside from bars from the land down under.

One of the neatest parts of St. Anton, and likely part of the reason it is so quiet in the summer, is that the “lodging” here is very atypical.  Instead of massive hotels and strings of condos, many of the lodging options in this town are actually free rooms (usually with their own showers, bathrooms, etc) within homes in the town.  While it is not something that we Americans do very often, it is actually a great way to stay in a resort town like this.  Even the cheapest options are very clean (we met a person from Australia who quipped “Austrians are very clean”), and the cuteness factor (did I just say that) is very high.  Typically these rooms include a free breakfast, and the hospitality is wonderful.  After a long winter of working hard catering to guests (and playing hard with the visitors), residents seem to settle in for the summer.

One of many pensions in St. Anton

After spending so much time in Switzerland, and then venturing over to Austria, it is amazing to start to realize that each of the areas within each country has its own ski culture, and approach to what skiing means to them.  Given that resorts were built around the necessity to ski in winter (to get food, etc), instead of around the sheer recreation of the sport, the feel of the towns is much different.

On to Innsbruck!

$29 tickets for Leap Day (get it? 29th of February for $29…)

Hey everyone,

So we have been running around all week trying to line up some great deals, and have found some awesome options at resorts all around the country. For this one, resorts are taking advantage of the extra day in February (and the typical slow period after February vacation) by offering $29 discount lift tickets on Friday the 29th. We also have some other great deals this weekend, but check these resorts out for the $29 deal.

Resorts that have the $29 deal available are…

• Bolton Valley, VT
• Gunstock, NH
• Ragged, NH
• Jay Peak, VT
• Smugglers’ Notch, VT
• Mountain Creek, NJ
• Windham Mountain, NY
• Arapahoe Basin, CO
• Ski Cooper (not Copper…), CO
• Mt. Baldy, CA
• Powder Mountain, UT

Beyond these, there are some awesome other deals this weekend, so get out there and have some fun!

E

End of February Vacation Ski Lift Ticket Deals (Sunday 02/24)

Hi All,

Things are going crazy lately, the snow has been amazing all over the place.  “But it is vacation week with no deal”  you say?  To cap off the end of the break, we have some awesome deals on discount lift tickets for this Sunday, 02/24.

Plattekill, NY: $25 (48% off!!!)

Wildcat, NH: $34.99 (41% off)

Bolton Valley, VT: $39.99 (32% off)

Ragged Mountain, NH: $37.99 (32% off)

Mt. Baldy Learn to Ski Package: $40 (32% off)

Whiteface, NY: $52.99 ( 26% off)

Mountain Creek, NJ: $49.99 (19% off)

Ski Cooper, CO: $31.50 (19% off)

Arapahoe Basin, CO: $46.99 (19% off)

Waterville Valley, NH: $50.99 (16% off)

Powder Mountain, UT: $45 (15% off)

Angel Fire, NM: $50.99 (14% off)

Jay Peak, VT: $53.99 (13% off).

A ton of others too!  There is pretty much something for everyone out there, so go ski, have some fun, and take advantage while winter is still here!

Evmo