Vail Resorts sees big early-season drop in visitors — but not revenue

Spotty snow and the Omicron variant left Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN) ski hills dealing with greatly reduced early-season crowds in recent months. But the Broomfield industry giant’s focused effort on selling season passes kept its revenues largely flat over the same period. Vail Resorts officials reported Friday that year-to-date crowds through Jan. 2 — a period that includes the important end-of-year holiday season — fell 18.7% this year versus the same time in 2019-20, and even down 1.7% versus…