Holiday Valley Resort — Hotel in Town of Ellicottville

This is honestly the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. Last year I bought my lift pass & rental in advance to save time at the hill. I woke up with the flu day of and gave the rental to someone in our group. When they spoke to the staff at rentals & explained the situation - the staff assured them I’d be able to get rebook for another day or get a refund “no problem” since I was sick & to just contact customer service. Called that afternoon and couldn’t get through. Then tried for the next 2 weeks and still couldn’t get through - they don’t have voicemail. I submitted a request using the contact form on their site - never got a response. Then found an email address through the contact button on their instagram page. Our trip was January - I got my 1st response end of Feb.

They said I could get a refund if I provided a doctor’s note. Since we’re from Canada - I couldn’t just pop into my doctors office while sick (the flu isn’t something the average person would even go to a doctor for), so my doctor couldn’t write the note without having seen me. We were planing on going back in March so I responded asking if I could simply have a rain check for the lift pass to use when we went again, instead of a refund. This email was ignored and I never got a response.

The fact that I waited weeks for a response, only to have a customer service rep give a completely different answer than the staff onsite gave our group shows a pretty inconsistent understanding of policies among staff. I was frustrated with how hard it was to reach customer service then extremely disappointed by the the lack of response, especially after our group was assured getting a raincheck wouldn’t have been a problem at all.

We planned another trip for this year - so I followed up asking for a response on the matter only to have a customer service employee (shockingly) call me a few hours later to give the same regurgitated response. I explained the situation - she gave zero remorse for the lack of response or how difficult it was to contact them and insisted their staff was perfectly trained on their policies - which clearly isn’t the case. She was incredibly rude and her “solution” was to have me come into customer service so she could print off the return policy for me to review. She said without a doctors note they “don’t legally have to give me a refund since I can’t prove I was sick,” a pretty pathetic customer service response to someone who was a return customer simply asking for a raincheck. As if they’d rather I just showed up puking to prove I was sick. I’d hope that after the pandemic you would want to ensure the health & safety of your guests & would actually encourage them to stay home when ill.

Our group of 6 has visited the last two years and won’t be back if this is the kind of “customer service” they feel is appropriate - especially for returning business.

UPDATE: I emailed them as they requested in their response - I got an email back reiterating what they already said in their reply to my review and then they ignored my response. Clearly their response to my review was just an attempt to save face publicly to make it look like they’d do something while making zero attempt to make it right. The most disappointing customer...

We skied here for 3 days. There were up to 15 people from 4 families skiing at different times. Most were beginners and ages ranged from 7 to 50. 2 people took group lessons. We bought our tickets where you get the ski rentals. Half our group rented from the HV ski shop, the other half from Mud Sweat and Gears (for our family) in town. Pros and cons to renting at either place. We were told by a local friend that the gear was better at Mud Sweat and Gears but the prices are actually cheaper at the ski shop. Less wait time at MS&G vs HV where lines can be long but we had to transport it every day. But we stayed in town. We debated between staying at HV to be close to skiing vs in downtown Ellicottville. We chose the latter so that the kids (and adults) could be free to roam around and we had a variety of restaurants to choose from, shops to visit, pool and hot tub, grocery store, all within walking distance. I am a beginner skier and I could not afford to get injured so I just stayed on the bunny slope the entire time. The problem with the ski passes (especially buying them at the rental windows, not exactly sure where all you can buy them) is that they do not list the pass prices so on the morning of the third day, we realized those of us who stayed on the bunny slope (Creekside - Schoolhaus East and West) could have been paying $25 instead of $77. That's quite a bit of money times the amount of people we had that stayed on that hill. The website is difficult to read and being my first time there, had I seen the $25 Creekside option, I wouldn't have known what it was. On the third day about 4.30pm, we went to talk to Janice in customer service which is also where a ton of college students were getting their season passes. Took us 30 minutes to get through the line but she comped us for our evening skiing and took our information. On that note, the customer everywhere was great. I was extremely impressed by the crew that ran the Creekside lifts. They were so helpful to all the beginners (picking them up, sending up dropped items on the chair behind them) and very friendly. That was lovely! There are lots of places to hang out. We visited Starbucks several times and the drinks were reasonable. The sandwiches however were extremely expensive imo. On the last evening I ventured upstairs and saw that they had a whole host of other food options that were more reasonable. It was not really below freezing when we came so the snow was not the greatest but they do make it so it was adequate. We had fun regardless and Ellicottville is...

Decent hotel pricing but the staff was unpleasant. Especially the lift ticket cashier. Old sour lady with glasses. We were there to check out the eclipse and the lift was running people up to the top and back. We weren’t skiing as it was April 8. So we walked to the lift and the employee there said we had to buy a ticket. We didn’t see anyone else with tickets. Apparently it was an $80 per person package you had to buy through the resort that was never offered or mentioned when we paid for the room. You got a plastic cup, eclipse glasses and a lift ticket. If you wanted just the lift ticket, that was $30 each. So four of us, my wife and two kids needed $120 to ride the one time up and back. That seemed unreasonable. Back to sour puss, when I said that, she slammed the window in my face as a Frank You, very rude. The hot dog cookout they said was there was not a cookout at all. They were serving food in the cafe. That was what they called a cookout. The cash bar was just the regular ski bar. The breakfast they served for the hotel patrons was 7 am to 10 am. It was packed with no seats available and we were there by 7:10 am. One family of six commandeered a couple tables and stayed from the time we got there to scrape together something to eat until we left and came back through the lobby at 9 am. They had a baby and two kids under 10, the mom and dad and the mother in law. It was ridiculous to spend two hours camped out on a continental style breakfast with as big of a crowd as there was. We had two kids and we were finished in less than 30 minutes. Smh. People are inconsiderate when it comes to common sense and several people complained to staff but nothing was said to the family for two hours. It was a madhouse and again, the staff was not prepared and had no clue how to handle the mass of people there. Can’t even begin to imagine what this place would be like in peak ski season. We won’t be going back. The place was old and dated back to its heyday of 20 years ago. Actually wasn’t bad facilities, and I took a lot of pictures. The staff just didn’t want to deal...