Existing Base Area Facilities

Ecosign utilized guest service floor area information at the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort provided by Snow Engineering in March of 2003. No changes have taken place at the resort since that time. The existing slider service space is listed in Table II.15. Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort currently has two major slider service buildings in the existing "base" area.

Existing Guest Services

In 1977, the United States Forest Service performed a detailed inventory of slider service facilities at Western U.S. resorts. This inventory was tabulated and broken down into 15 service functions. Ecosign has since updated this database using the U.S.F.S. format to provide current slider service standards for both North American and European day ski areas, regional resorts and destination resorts.

Table II.15 illustrates the square feet of floorspace in each category of service in the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort guest services buildings. The total floor area of all of guest services is 9,667 square feet. Of that, 5,411 square feet is used for slider staging functions, 2,815 for commercial functions, 742 for administration, employee facilities and ski patrol and approximately 700 for storage/mechanical and circulations/wall/waste.

Guest Services Glossary

Guest services are specifically related to the operation and management of the mountain resort area. For planning purposes, these services can be broken down into three distinct categories:

Staging facilities include ticket sales, public lockers, equipment rental and repair, ski and snowboard school, children's programs and retail sales, and are located in the base areas. These services should be sized in relation to the number of guests staging through the base area portal.

Commercial facilities are generally located both in the base area and on the mountain, and include food and beverage seating, kitchen and serving areas, restrooms and accessory retail space. Restaurant seats should be planned relative to the number of sliders circulating in the vicinity of the restaurant sites. Kitchens and restrooms must be sized in proportion to the amount of seating in each restaurant.

Operational facilities are generally "back of the house" services and include administration, employee lockers and mountain patrol facilities. These facilities are also generally located both on the mountain and in the base area.

Analysis of Existing Guest Services

The "Design Day" is the business level that the guest service buildings are designed for, rather than a peak day or the mountain SCC. Generally, the Design Day is set lower than the peak day to avoid building guest services for unrealistic business levels. Depending on the variation in the business levels at the resort, possible approaches to determine the Design Day are to calculate the average number of guests on the ten busiest days of the winter season, or to set the business levels at 80 percent of the winter season's peak day. Based upon the Design Day levels and the Ecosign standard level of service for day ski areas, we have calculated the amount of required floorspace.

Daylodge Buildings

Table II.15, the Space Use Analysis, points out deficiencies and surpluses in the floor area of guest service space at the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort. The existing space use inventory has been compared with Ecosign's planning standards for the appropriate level of service at resorts such as Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort.

When compared to the resort area floor space recommendations, all but one of the resort guest and skier/snowboarder service functions appear to have inadequate area to service the design day level of visitation. While there appears to be adequate floor area associated with the public locker function, generally, the existing facilities are under supplied, antiquated and poorly designed, leading to inefficiency and a level of service that cannot really service the guests in an acceptable manner. Based on an estimated SCC of 1,400 plus sliders, these service facilities are totally overwhelmed. Furthermore, the shortage of all other service functions is resulting in guests experiencing a sub-standard level of service and limiting revenue.

TABLE II.15
LAS VEGAS SKI AND SNOWBOARD RESORT
SPACE USE ANALYSIS

SCC = 1,400
Design Day (80% of SCC) = 1,120

Existing
Floorspace 		Existing
Sq. Ft. 		Recomm.
Floorspace 		Recomm.
Floorspace 		Percent
of Recomm. 		Sliders
Serviced
Service Function (ft²) per Slider per Slider (ft²) Floorspace
Staging Facilities
Ticket Sales 165 0.15 0.15 168 98% 1,100
Public Lockers 2,507 2.24 0.95 1,064 236% 2,639
Restrooms 340 0.30 0.88 986 34% 386
Equipment Rental & Repair 1,874 1.67 2.00 2,240 84% 937
Guest Services / Ski & Snowboard School 300 0.27 0.38 426 70% 789
Children's Programs 225 0.20 0.43 482 47% 523
Subtotal Staging Facilities 5,411 4.83 4.79 5,365 101% 1,130
Commercial Facilities
Food Service Seating 1,497 1.34 3.00 3,360 45% 499
Kitchen & Scramble 768 0.69 0.99 1,109 69% 776
Bar / Lounge 100 0.09 0.75 840 12% 133
Accessory Retail 450 0.40 0.58 650 69% 776
Subtotal Commercial Facilities 2,815 2.51 5.32 5,958 47% 529
Operational Facilities
Administration 360 0.32 0.80 896 40% 450
Employee Facilities 144 0.13 0.40 448 32% 360
First Aid & Patrol 238 0.21 0.30 336 71% 793
Subtotal Operational Facilities 742 0.66 1.50 1,680 44% 495
BUILDING SUBTOTAL 8,968 8.01 11.61 13,003 69% 772
Storage & Mechanical 96 0.80 1.16 1,300 7% 83
Circulation/ Walls/ Waste 603 1.20 1.74 1,950 31% 346
TOTAL 9,667 10.01 14.51 16,254 59% 1,201

If the existing built space were reconfigured and reallocated among the skier service functions, we feel that the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort has enough built space to service approximately 1,201 skiers per day in the existing buildings that provide skier service facilities. However, the existing buildings are poorly configured and are quite dated and should be replaced.

Plate II.6 provides a graphic illustration of the guest services space use analysis at the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort.

LAS VEGAS SKI AND SNOWBOARD RESORT
GUEST SERVICES SPACE USE ANALYSIS

PLATE II.6

Restaurant Seating Inventory

There are approximately 107 indoor cafeteria seats and 8 bar seats in the daylodge building. Skiers and sliders routinely use bar or lounge seats as food service seats during lunchtime, therefore the bar seats have been counted as food service seats. Ecosign makes the assumption that on busy days during the lunch period between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., each seat can comfortably accommodate three sliders, with a turnover time of approximately 40 minutes each. These 115 indoor seats can, therefore, accommodate approximately 345 sliders during the lunch time rush. There are approximately 18 moveable picnic tables located outside the cafeteria. Assuming 8 seats per picnic table and three turns over the lunch period, we estimate that these tables can accommodate approximately another 428 guests. The kitchen is significantly undersized and poorly equipped for the combined bar and cafeteria seating.