CEO Dave Tanner says Aspen must stabilize skier visits, house its workforce and protect the experience—even as Aspen One expands hospitality far beyond the Roaring Fork Valley.
Aspen One CEO Dave Tanner recently delivered something rare in the ski business: a candid assessment that was neither a victory lap nor a snow report. His message was that an iconic destination of Aspen, the ski mountain can remain globally desirable while the underlying business of operating a ski town grows more difficult.
Most would agree that the Roaring Fork Valley leading to Aspen ski mountain has more prestige, pricing power and extrodinary real estate to make it by far the most fashionable and sought after location in the entire North American continent. However, Aspen faces declining skier visitation, exhausted consumers, expensive employee housing, congested transportation and a winter season compressed by climate change. Aspen One is responding by investing in the mountain while expanding hospitality beyond skiing—but Tanner says the company cannot stabilize the destination alone.
Tanner described the ski business as mature, capital intensive and highly exposed to weather. Increased lift ticket pricing helped carry the industry for much of the last decade, but customers are showing resistance to further increases. At the same time, inflation has pushed up labor, maintenance, snowmaking, construction and insurance costs.
Colorado skier visitation fell approximately 24%, while Aspen Snowmass performed somewhat better than the statewide average, Aspen’s skier visits have declined for three consecutive years and have shown little long-term growth in roughly two decades.
So while Aspen’s homes, hotels and cultural identity command global attention, Aspen One, the operating engine beneath the destination faces thinner margins and higher fixed costs. The ski mountain created this world class community, but now, while the Roaring Fork Valley prospers, the ski mountain operators are taking it on the chin.
Over the past three years, Aspen One and the Crown family have invested more than $1 billion across hospitality, the brand, employee benefits, housing and the core resort business. The Crown family has diversified their lodging and hotel holdings outside of Aspen. The Limelight hotels in Boulder and Mammoth have opened, while The Nell New York and Limelight Charleston are planned to open by the end of 2027. This is an attempt to find growth outside the roaring Fork Valley and reinvest some of those benefits back into Aspen and Snowmass. Locally, Aspen One’s hotels account for only about 4% of the valley’s lodging beds, which means the company controls only a small portion of the total guest journey even though it operates the defining mountain experience.
Aspen One has invested heaving in work force housing and now owns more than 1,300 employee beds throughout the Roaring Fork Valley after investing more than $100 million in housing over roughly two decades. The company says it needs substantially more capacity by 2030 simply to replace retiring employees and maintain today’s service levels.
In addition to the ski mountain amenity draw, Aspen One represent approximately 28% of all jobs in Pitkin County. So, employment and employee housing and the ski area all need to work to continue to make Aspen the first in class destination it is. Tanner is asking local governments for zoning flexibility, more efficient permitting and partnership on proposed housing. The company, in return, must show that new projects serve both operational needs and the long-term character of the community.
Lift tickets, mountain dining and rental equipment—the items Aspen One can most directly control—represent only about 20% of a family’s total Aspen vacation cost, according to Tanner. Lodging, airfare, ground transportation and other expenses do the rest.
Aspen One estimates that an all-in Aspen vacation now costs about 50% more than a comparable trip to other ski destinations. Accommodation, transportation, dinning and rentals far outweigh the increases in lift ticket prices over the years.
In addition, Aspen One’s analysis suggests winter is already about one month shorter than it was 30 years ago and may lose another two weeks by 2050. More snowmaking and new snow-coverage technology can help, but both require capital and add operating expense.
When considering Tanners warnings to Aspen, I immediately think of the Vail Valley in comparison. Vail and Aspen have different ownership structures and business models, but they share the same mountain-town equation: premium real estate, constrained land, expensive labor, transportation bottlenecks and a defining ski amenity that requires constant reinvestment.
Strong property sales do not make these operating pressures disappear. Eagle County real estate volume surpassed $3.2 billion in 2025, illustrating the depth of demand and wealth in the Vail Valley. Yet a mature real estate economy still depends on the quality of the place—its mountain, public realm, workforce, transportation and hospitality.
Tanner’s most important question was simple: “Is Aspen going to continue to be a ski town?” The Vail Valley may want to ask itself the same question.
Related analysis: Vail Valley Real Estate Sales Volume Topped $3.2 Billion in 2025 and Vail Resorts at a Crossroads Introduces the “Epic Experience.”
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