LIFT CONSTRUCTION SURVEY 2024 Cooling Off
BY PETER LANDSMAN, EDITOR, LIFTBLOG.COM
Despite fewer lifts being built, it was still a busy construction season as ski areas continue to upgrade their on-mountain transport.
Michael Manley, whose company com- pleted 13 ski area installations, down three from last year. “On the flip side, Western Canada was really a step up for us.” Canada was a bright spot in gener- al, accounting for 27 percent of installed VTFH in 2024, up from just 12 percent in 2023. “The number of lifts is down a lit- tle bit, but it’s mostly a bit of a different product mix,” says Doppelmayr USA president Katharina Schmitz. Her firm
After two gangbuster years of new lift installations at North American ski areas, 2024 was comparatively slow- er, yet historically strong with 47 new aerial lifts constructed. That’s a 17.5 percent decline from 2023—but still the third most installations in the past 10 years and the fifth most since 2000. Continent-wide, installed ver- tical transport feet per hour (VTFH) fell nearly 28 percent, signaling the average lift was smaller in 2024 than
in the previous two years. However, the 91,056 total VTFH ranks as the third most this century. While most regions remained rel- atively consistent, Midwest ski areas installed just two new aerial lifts, down from a dozen a year earlier and perhaps a reflection of one of the region’s worst snow years in decades. “Certainly, the Midwest went quiet, but otherwise we were pretty busy,” says Leitner-Poma of America director of sales
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