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Profit share bonuses for Aspen Skiing Co. ski and snowboard instructors took a nosedive this year, with some of them reporting an 88% decrease in their take. Some of the instructors, called “pros,” say they want more transparency about their bonus amounts, while Aspen Skiing Co. says extra pay is never a guarantee.
“Obviously, the profit share has been the talk of the locker room,” a ski instructor, Pro B, said. “We’re just confused … we bring in a lot of money for the company. People are kind of fed up because they know that they have the money to share.”
The Aspen Daily News agreed to the instructors’ request, made out of concerns for their job security, to withhold their names for this story.
In an email sent to full-time instructors in September, Jonathan Ballou, vice president, SkiCo Mountain Sales and School, said the school made enough money in the 2023-24 season to trigger the pro profit share program.
“In years of exceptional financial performance, the school shares a portion of its profit above and beyond budget to Pros in the form of profit sharing,” the email obtained by Aspen Daily News states.
According to the email, Ballou reported the company “again experienced an unprecedented level of demand from private lessons, resulting in another record year for volume in that product.”
It also notes the profit sharing program isn’t ignited every year; past company emails reviewed by Aspen Daily News show it was implemented in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 for the prior ski seasons. The profit share program debuted in 1994.
The September email told pros to expect another email with their exact bonus amounts in October. When that email arrived, pros got a much lower number than what they expected.
According to Pro A, their bonus pay went down 88% from 2023 to 2024, compared to a 25% decrease from 2022 to 2023.
Pro A, a ski instructor for nine years, first qualified for the profit share program in 2021-2022 ski season. They said the decrease seems incongruent with their own work schedule and general understanding of school bookings.
“I only heard all last ski season that school numbers are up,” Pro A said in an interview. “Most of the eligible ski instructors are really unhappy.”
Then on Nov. 5, Ballou sent another email to the eligible instructors in response to confusion about the bonus amount.
“While the 23/24 season was financially successful for the school and we did exceed budgetary expectations, we did not exceed expectations to the same extent as the previous several years. Therefore, the total value of the profit-share pool is significantly lower this year than the recent previous iterations,” he wrote in the email.
He also wrote in the email that the program is not triggered every year, and it has only been implemented in five of the last 15 years.
Ballou said the school is proud of its approximate 90% retention rate for pros year over year. Even with career instructors, Ballou said he needed to remind staff that the profit share program’s output is not a given every year.
“Periodically, we need to retrain people on what our processes are. This (program) has been in play since 1994, but not commonly,” Ballou said in an interview with the Aspen Daily News. “So I put an email out describing more of the mechanics with an invitation to have a conversation with me on this stuff.”
The profit share program was created in 1994 as a recruitment tool for the school. The bonus amount is calculated using the final budget excess and hours worked by the pro in the prior season. Ballou said “zero components” of the program have changed in its history.
Full-time instructors qualify for the program. Ballou declined to confirm the teaching-hour threshold for eligibility. Only on-mountain instructor work counts toward the hours.
If an instructor pivots to guest service work on a day that they do not get any clients, that time does not count as teaching hours, according to a pro. Ballou said utilization, or the pros who work on any given day, is much higher now than pre-pandemic due to structural changes that center around reservations, though there are some variances.
The program is triggered when “the school achieves over 100% of budgeted EBITDA,” according to Ballou’s Nov. 5 email. EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
Ballou said that the pandemic years were a boon for the school, due to both visitation and business changes. SkiCo implemented their “Max 5” group lesson structure, limiting lessons to five people to comply with health and safety regulations. Ballou said it was also a financial and brand quality success for the school, keeping pro to student ratios lower.
“(In pandemic years) there was a huge amount of business that came in above and beyond what we had expected, including some restructuring of business that made us more profitable. So the profit shares in those years were larger,” he said. “Last year, simply put, we had a decline in visitation like everyone in the industry. Actually, we did better than other places that didn't meet their budgets at all.”
Ballou declined to share the budgetary decisions that impacted the profit share program or if other Aspen One budgets inform the school budget. Aspen One, the parent of SkiCo, is a private company and does not publicly disclose its financial information.
Pro B first worked for the school 10 years ago. They went to another resort for one season, then returned to SkiCo after deciding the company was better to work for. They’ve been a full-time instructor ever since.
Having received the bonus annually since 2021, Pro B said the language of the September email did not prepare them for such a significant decrease in the amount.
“It was just startling,” they said. “A lot of instructors were hoping it would pay for rent. Communication would’ve been the biggest thing.”
Pro B said their bonus went down to around $180 this year, after a 2021 and 2022 profit share of about $2,000 and about $1,500 in 2023.
Not all of the pros were concerned with the decline in profit share. Pro C, whose 28th season as a full-time ski instructor began this year, said the program is rarely triggered and they do not ever expect it.
“After last year’s ski season, I’m shocked to get any bonus,” Pro C said. “I’ve been in the industry 40 years; I’ve learned you cannot have any expectations of anything.”
Pro C also pointed to a raise this year as offsetting the bonus decrease, though they felt the school overhired last season. Pro B agreed, saying the rookie class keeps expanding.
An Aspen One representative said all employees get raises annually and they pride themselves on having the best compensated teams in the industry.
Ballou said the school is steadily hiring, focusing recruitment to areas that show growth — for example, private lessons for children six and under.
For this season, Ballou said SkiCo has about 1,340 teaching staff in the school. About 65-70% of them are full-time, he said.
“We had a smaller staff in 2021 and then we built back up over the next few years. We’re about where we were pre-pandemic now, size wise, so we were a little smaller, but we built up slowly,” he said. “We have no shortage of applications.”
A private lesson for Dec. 30 at Aspen Mountain costs $1,233 for up to five students, according to a recent search on the Aspen Snowmass website. A beginner group lesson on Snowmass ski area for the same day would cost $338, which includes a 7% discount. The pricing does not include lift ticket cost.
Each pro said that the Aspen Snowmass Ski and Snowboard School is known internationally as one of the best, if not the best, ski school for which to work and to attend.
“We call ourselves the best ski school in the world, so we’ve got to maintain that level,” said Pro C.
Ballou emphasized that there are no plans to alter the profit share program formula.
“I have no intention of altering our compensation structures,” he said. “In the snowsports world, we are deeply committed — and it’s one of the things that keeps me here — to being the highest compensated, best trained in the industry.”
Still, Pro B said recent changes — such as returning pros not getting a new hat like they have at the start of past seasons — are adding up.
“It feels like the little things that make us happy are getting taken out of the budget,” Pro B said.
Ballou encouraged pros with questions to approach him to better understand the profit share program formula.