Money

Prices, passes, seasonal pricing, marketing campaigns and their prerequisites, loans, debt and difficulty.

#Income and costs

Income comes from day passes, season passes, restaurants, shops, lodging, rentals and attractions, plus small grants for completing goals. Costs are construction, upkeep, wages, energy for lifts, rescues, marketing and loan interest. Finance shows the breakdown, monthly reports and the year report.

At the end of each month a small month summary card shows income, expenses and net (you can switch it off in Settings).

#Pricing

Open Pricing to set day-pass and season-pass prices, food and shop markups and prices for individual attractions. The game compares each with a fair price (which rises with your star rating) and tells you if you are cheap or expensive. Too cheap, and VIPs get suspicious. Too dear, and budget skiers stay home. Price changes apply immediately, but jumping a price by more than about a third causes a short-lived price shock that hurts happiness and arrivals.

You can price by weekday and season too. Peak days are weekends, holidays and powder days (it is snowing hard); regular days are Fridays; off-peak days are Monday to Thursday. Peak days bring more guests, so a premium is reasonable.

#Marketing campaigns

Campaigns raise arrivals of certain guests for a while. Each has prerequisites that the panel lists (and tells you what to build): a ski school, a kids area, an open lift, an open piste, parking, a restaurant, enough rating, summer attractions and so on. A running campaign pauses if its requirements vanish and is cancelled after a short grace period.

Festivals have their own cards just below the campaigns: see Events, stories & the region.

#Loans, debt and support

• Take loans from the Finance drawer (up to five at once, with a monthly interest rate that depends on difficulty).
• You may go into debt: cash can go negative. Interest is charged, the rating suffers a bit, and construction is refused until you are back above zero.
• Staff wages are part of the bill: with the default Auto crews there is nothing extra to pay, courses add a small upkeep (see Operations & safety).
• The first time your cash dips below zero in summer or autumn, the Tourism Board offers a one-off interest-free support loan for a year.
• On Relaxed and Normal difficulty the bank never forecloses; you decide when to declare bankruptcy. On Challenging, two straight in-game years deep in the red ends the game.

#Difficulty