An Open Message to Our Crystal Guests
November 25, 2020
Today was a day of extremes. The snow and conditions were like mid-winter. The entire mountain was open and skiing and riding superbly. We all had to remind ourselves it is still November and we have been open and enjoying the mountain we all love for more than a week with many still to come.
At the same time, for many of you who were here today, you’ll know there were challenges in the guest experience. The ride up was steady but slow. Parking took time. The experience during the morning rush at the ticket windows was less than comfortable. We’ve heard from many of you the mountain was too crowded – from the standpoint of being a safe and comfortable experience in this challenging pandemic environment. We also heard about frustrations with our newly introduced reservations system.
First let us say we listen carefully to each piece of feedback – we had hundreds of conversations with guests today, most of them in person and also via our contact center, social media and email.
We believe there’s a host of reasons why today was as it turned out. The overnight snow, snowing on the ride up, the newness of our reservations platform, not being able to offer indoor dining to name a few. But also the fact that we have such good snow, other PNW resorts not yet open, our guests staying close to home for the Thanksgiving holiday, all of it conspired to make for a challenging day. And underscoring it all, our collective responsibility to wear masks, keep social distances in the base area, the mazes and on the mountain, and generally to responsibly keep each other safe so that we can all continue to enjoy this one respite from the challenging world we’re now living through.
For our part, Crystal is limiting the capacity of visitors to the mountain to be able to keep our experience safe and enjoyable. We’ve been open for 8 days and we are still learning what that capacity is. Today we believe we reached and exceeded it. To be candid, over the past 10 years or so we’ve never had more than a fraction of the visitors we saw today this early in November. If we could turn back the clock today, we would have set today’s capacity lower. And we've done that for tomorrow, Friday and through the weekend. We’ve learned, we’ve listened, and we want to apologize for today’s challenging experience. All we can say is that our intent was and will continue to be to enable as many visitors to the mountain as we can safely enjoyably accommodate while operating safely for our guests, our staff and our community. Today we got it wrong, tomorrow we’ll get it right, and each day that passes we’ll continue to dial it in.
All we would ask of our guests is to bear with us as we navigate this new landscape. We will get it right. We ask you to support us in doing what you individually can do to enhance the experience: please mask up, please be cognizant of your fellow guests and give them space, be a little patient of each other and help us all beat these enormous challenges.
With that we look forward to spending Thanksgiving with you, our Crystal family tomorrow. rich-text, responsive-table
Today was a day of extremes. The snow and conditions were like mid-winter. The entire mountain was open and skiing and riding superbly. We all had to remind ourselves it is still November and we have been open and enjoying the mountain we all love for more than a week with many still to come.
At the same time, for many of you who were here today, you’ll know there were challenges in the guest experience. The ride up was steady but slow. Parking took time. The experience during the morning rush at the ticket windows was less than comfortable. We’ve heard from many of you the mountain was too crowded – from the standpoint of being a safe and comfortable experience in this challenging pandemic environment. We also heard about frustrations with our newly introduced reservations system.
First let us say we listen carefully to each piece of feedback – we had hundreds of conversations with guests today, most of them in person and also via our contact center, social media and email.
We believe there’s a host of reasons why today was as it turned out. The overnight snow, snowing on the ride up, the newness of our reservations platform, not being able to offer indoor dining to name a few. But also the fact that we have such good snow, other PNW resorts not yet open, our guests staying close to home for the Thanksgiving holiday, all of it conspired to make for a challenging day. And underscoring it all, our collective responsibility to wear masks, keep social distances in the base area, the mazes and on the mountain, and generally to responsibly keep each other safe so that we can all continue to enjoy this one respite from the challenging world we’re now living through.
For our part, Crystal is limiting the capacity of visitors to the mountain to be able to keep our experience safe and enjoyable. We’ve been open for 8 days and we are still learning what that capacity is. Today we believe we reached and exceeded it. To be candid, over the past 10 years or so we’ve never had more than a fraction of the visitors we saw today this early in November. If we could turn back the clock today, we would have set today’s capacity lower. And we've done that for tomorrow, Friday and through the weekend. We’ve learned, we’ve listened, and we want to apologize for today’s challenging experience. All we can say is that our intent was and will continue to be to enable as many visitors to the mountain as we can safely enjoyably accommodate while operating safely for our guests, our staff and our community. Today we got it wrong, tomorrow we’ll get it right, and each day that passes we’ll continue to dial it in.
All we would ask of our guests is to bear with us as we navigate this new landscape. We will get it right. We ask you to support us in doing what you individually can do to enhance the experience: please mask up, please be cognizant of your fellow guests and give them space, be a little patient of each other and help us all beat these enormous challenges.
With that we look forward to spending Thanksgiving with you, our Crystal family tomorrow. rich-text, responsive-table