Vail Changes Leadership, HQ

By Richard Martin, 2-28-06

Enjoying one of the best years in its history, Vail Resorts today announced a new CEO and a move of its corporate headquarters from Avon, in Eagle County, to Denver.

Robert Katz, 39, who has been the company's lead director since 1992, will replace Adam Aron, who announced in January that he would step down in June after 10 years of running North America's second-largest ski resort company.

Vail Resorts is a publicly held company, and Wall Street reacted positively to the news. Vail's shares closed up more than 4 percent today.

Aron, 51, expanded Vail from its origins as a pure mountain resort company to a diversified recreation and tourism company that owns four ski areas in Colorado and one in California, plus resorts in Wyoming, Florida, New England. He said in January he wanted to leave "a winner" as Vail continued to expand.

"You've got this big number of kids between 7 and 20 who are discovering winter vacations," he told reporters at the time. "I think the ski industry is in a very healthy place."

Not everyone agrees. "It costs more now to go skiing than to go to Disney World," ski-industry analyst Dennis McAlpine told the Associated Press recently. "That's going to drive skier-days down."
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