Profile: Vail Resorts, Inc. (MTN)

Vail Resorts, Inc. is a public holding company. The Company’s operations are grouped into three business segments: Mountain, Lodging and Real Estate. The Company's Mountain segment owns and operates five ski resort properties, as well as ancillary businesses, including ski school, dining and retail/rental operations, which provide a resort experience to the clients. The Company's Lodging segment owns and/or manages a collection of luxury hotels under its RockResorts brand, as well as other lodging properties and a number of condominiums located in proximity to the Company's ski resorts, the Grand Teton Lodge Company (GTLC), which operates three destination resorts at Grand Teton National Park (the Park), Colorado Mountain Express (CME), a resort ground transportation company, and golf courses. The Company’s Real Estate segment owns and develops real estate in and around the Company’s resort communities.

Mountain Segment

The Company’s portfolio of ski resorts includes Vail Mountain, Breckenridge Ski Resort (Breckenridge), Keystone Resort (Keystone), Beaver Creek Resort (Beaver Creek) and Heavenly Mountain Resort (Heavenly). Vail Mountain offers terrain with approximately 5,300 skiable acres, including seven back bowls and the Blue Sky Basin area of the resort. Keystone offers guests a skiing opportunity through guided snow cat ski tours accessing five bowls. Beaver Creek is a European style resort with multiple villages and also includes a children’s ski school program focused on providing an experience with amenities, such as children’s gondola. Heavenly boasts the snowmaking capacity in the Lake Tahoe region and offers night life, including its proximity to several casinos. The resorts offer a range of recreational activities, including skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, sight-seeing, mountain biking, guided hiking, children’s activities and other recreational activities. In addition to providing extensive guest amenities, the Company also engages in, among other activities, the leasing out of the Company’s owned commercial space around its base resorts for restaurants and retail stores. The Company, through SSI Venture, LLC (SSV), has over 150 retail/rental locations specializing in sporting goods including ski, snowboard, golf and cycling equipment.

Lodging Segment

The Company’s lodging segment includes the operations of RockResorts; six additional independently flagged Company-owned hotels, management of the Vail Marriott Mountain Resort & Spa (Vail Marriott), Mountain Thunder Lodge, Crystal Peak Lodge and Austria Haus Hotel and condominium management operations; GTLC; CME, and five Company-owned resort golf courses in Colorado and one in Wyoming. As of July 31, 2009, the Lodging segment includes approximately 3900 owned and managed hotel and condominium rooms. The Company’s resort hotels offer a range of services to guests.

Real Estate Segment

The Company has holdings of real property at its resorts throughout Summit and Eagle Counties in Colorado. The Company's real estate operations, through Vail Resorts Development Company (VRDC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company, include the planning, oversight, infrastructure improvement, development, marketing and sale of the Company's real property holdings. VRDC’s principal activities include the vertical development of certain residential mixed-use projects that consist of both the sales of real estate units to third parties and the construction of resort depreciable assets, such as hotels, restaurants, spas, private clubs, commercial space, skier service facilities, parking structures and other amenities that the Company would own and operate and that would benefit the Company’s Mountain and Lodging segments; the sale of single-family homesites to individual purchasers; the sale of certain land parcels to third-party developers for condominium, townhome, cluster home, single family home, lodge and mixed use developments; the zoning, planning and marketing of resort communities; arranging for the construction of the necessary roads, utilities and resort infrastructure for new resort communities, and the purchase of selected land parcels for future development.

The Company competes with Aspen/Snowmass, Copper Mountain, Deer Valley, Mammoth Mountain, Northstar-at-Tahoe, Park City Mountain Resort, Squaw Valley USA, Steamboat, Whistler Blackcomb, Winter Park , Four Seasons, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Starwood’s Luxury Collection and Westin.