2022 summer meeting and the “NEW NORMAL”

A very big thank you to Gary Krasnov and RAA for hosting the 2022 summer meeting via zoom last night. Thank you to the club leaders who took the time to join. 7 airlines were in attendance. All three elected officers ran unopposed, that was the easy part of the meeting. 5 proposals were submitted and all voted down. The hardest part for Rocky and myself was to inform that we have 0 (zero) bids for the 2024 season. The simple reason is that we are asking for too much and only paying $150 registration per attendee. The resorts are under a lot of pressure as their costs has increased tremendously. The problem is twofold from how we were able to get bids in years past: Big corporations has taken over and now every department that deals with us has to show a profit. It doesn’t matter to them if overall we create a total profit for the resort. The IKON and EPIC season passes. In the past, lift ticket prices, even heavily discounted, would make up for any shortage for the cost of hosting us. Since the introduction of the passes, that all changed for NAASF. A great suggestion was made during the meeting to try and stay with only the resorts that honor one pass for that season, and if we are able, we will do our best to try that. A second great suggestion that we will run as a trial for the 2023 season is to change the Thursday awards dinner party to a cocktail party without the dinner for the first two weeks of the year. Then we will have a Formal Awards Gala at the last week where we dress up nicely and have a dinner. This gives the resorts some leeway and control of the costs for next year. With these ideas in mind, Rocky and I discussed our best options to get bids for 2024. Rocky will reach out to all his contacts asking them to submit a bid with pricing for everything we ask for. We can then choose how much we will include for the week and set the registration fee accordingly with an estimate of how many we feel will participate. This will result in the cost being different from week to week. Unfortunately, as inflation and labor costs increase for the ski areas, so does the cost to host NAASF ski weeks. Let me share some examples of what we experinced this winter and what is being proposed in order to host us. At Palisades, races cost $2750/day for a total of $8250. Diamond Peak informed us that they would be able to do the races for us for $28/racer and practice courses for $14/racer. If I use the numbers we had at Palisades the total is $12880. Comparing party venues between Palisades and Telluride for the Wednesday night party. The cost for the room only at Palisades was $10000, at Telluride we rent the convention center for $3000. Food and providing alcohol sales are not included. Jim Tullos approached Steamboat to see if we could use the Timber and Torch, they want $20000 to rent the venue. As a contrast, in 2019 it cost Steamboat $22790 for 3 parties, gondola and entertainment and racing!!! I knew we weren’t immune to price increases, but had no idea the cost would increase so rapidly and steeply. We are by no means giving up, and we will keep working dilligently to find venues to host us. I cannot thank Rocky enough for all the hard work he puts in to make this work. Thank you also to last nights attendees for good discussions and input to all of us. We also unveiled the video produced for NAASF by RAA at Palisades. Once it’s finalized it will be included on our website, in the meantime you can watch it here: https://app.frame.io/presentations/02f69230-4944-4300-8b52-16cf128e8540 In closing, I hope everyone has a great summer. As we get information on where our february 2023 week will be I’ll share it here and in emails. Are Johnsen NAASF president