PERISHER will be under the guidance of Nathan Butterworth who was appointed general manager in June. He moves into the position vacated by Belinda Trembath who has moved to Canada to run Whistler Blackcomb resort.
Nathan is no stranger to Perisher, having worked in senior management since 2002. In more recent times he had a short 12-month stint as Hotham Alpine Resort general manager.
The Snowy Mountains Magazine caught up with Nathan in mid-June to enquire about his thoughts and Perisher’s future.
Prior to Perisher, Nathan said he worked as an investment banker and “had a love of regional rural areas” before the stars aligned to bring his strong commercial background to Perisher in 2002.
“To create an opportunity here for the then CEO Ashley Blondel and Ian Brandon (finance) to provide some commercial advice as part of some lease negotiations with national parks, the lease extension, head lease and the much touted village development programs,” was how Nathan described his early role.
It’s ironic these topics are still front and centre today, a sign of how negotiations have progressed so slowly. Perisher has since changed owners, with the Packer family selling to Vail Resorts.
When Peter Brulisauer became CEO Nathan’s role changed, he was now responsible for an overseeing commercial approach for departments. “I had carriage of ski school, retail rental tickets, guest services and things for pretty much 16 of the 20 odd years,” said Nathan.
Coming from a commercial background Nathan was asked how this affected his approach to the snow industry and does it stand him in good stead in the general manager role.
“I think what it does is distil your thinking back into the levers both on the revenue and the cost side. And at the end of the day, as much as we all love this as a pastime, you're here to run it as a business and make sure that the team are making good decisions and that we can encourage reinvestment in the resort and that certainly provide a great standing.”
Nathan talked about the advantage of overseeing Hotham lift company, gaining an understanding of a new resort and working with new stakeholders. It was a sliding doors moment as Belinda Trembath had overseen Hotham lift company for a similar period of time Nathan had been at Perisher. Now in new roles, we enquired had they corresponded for private discussions.
“With the close relationships that we've all had, despite the change in leaders, that provided some great continuity in leadership across the resorts and some stability with that.”
With the swift change of leadership, Nathan said it was a lot of learning and understanding of their new environments. Commenting on any change he had noticed back at Perisher, he said, “I think one of the big things that I'm seeing already, I classify as pride, the injection of a sense of pride amongst the team here to not only do what they've always done, but to try and make sure that if they're providing a service or that our employees are just out in the front line, just contributing a far more positive and proud sort of presence.”
During the June interview there were looming storms which delivered healthy snow returns, ideal for a first season in charge. Nathan spoke with a solid grounding of resort operations and keen on opening up new terrain and lifts whenever possible.
Commenting on season pass and ticket sales this season, compared to last season which he described as a massive tailwind on the back of the pandemic, he thought it would be a far more normal season.
“We've seen a continued push from traditional ticket products into the pass (season pass) and we think that's great for us and also great for the guests who are able to enjoy far more flexibility in their visitation.”
“I can see 2019 is far more of a reasonable barometer for the way things are looking to pan out and we'll be working to make that as healthy as possible.”
Changing subject, we spoke of his knowledge of transitioning to a head lease and the ongoing village development that is with the SAP master plan (see pages 16,17). Nathan was adamant of the best solution.
“Both of those things are still entrained 21 years later, with national parks, and it's something that we're still actively working through, and I think we'll get too. But it's going to be critical, village development and infill development for the continued success of Perisher.”
“The ingress and egress challenges and the easiest and most sensible way to solve that is to create some additional capacity in the valley to support the sort of visitation that Perisher enjoys on a regular basis and get people off those roads in between Perisher and primarily Jindabyne.”
