Put the housing answer above the fold
Generic job-description advice is abundant and mostly useless for seasonal work, because it optimizes for the wrong thing. A candidate deciding between your restaurant in Frisco and a lift op job at Keystone is not comparing bullet lists of responsibilities. They are solving one problem: where do I sleep from November to April, and what does it cost me.
So the housing block goes near the top, and it answers seven things:
- Status. Housing provided, housing assistance, or no housing. Say which one.
- Weekly cost and what it covers. Utilities? Wi-Fi? Parking? Bedding?
- Shared or private, and how many people to a room.
- Move-in and move-out dates, which are not the same as your employment dates.
- How the money moves. Payroll deduction, separate rent payment, or a wage credit.
- What happens if the job ends early, on either side.
- If there's no housing, the towns people actually commute from and what that drive is in February.
Everything else in the posting can be ordinary. This part can't.
"Housing available" is not a housing answer
Compare two lines for the same job.
Competitive pay. Housing available for qualified candidates. Great team environment!
$22/hr. Shared room (two people) in a company three-bedroom in Silverthorne, $185/week deducted from each paycheck, heat and Wi-Fi included, one parking space per unit. Move-in November 12, move-out April 20.
The first one generates three emails per applicant and loses the candidate somewhere in the middle of them. The second one converts, and it converts specifically among the people who are ready to commit in September rather than in November. That is the whole game in the winter hiring calendar: the candidates who move early are the ones whose housing question got answered early.
If your housing is genuinely uncertain in August, say that too. "We expect two spots in employee housing and will know by September 15" is a real answer. "Housing available" is not.
The deduction rules behind the number you post
Before you publish a weekly figure, know which mechanism you're using, because the rules differ and the wrong one is expensive.
Under federal law, an employer can count the reasonable cost of lodging toward wages under section 3(m) of the FLSA, but only under specific conditions. The Wage and Hour Division's Field Assistance Bulletin 2015-1 lays them out: the lodging has to be regularly provided by the employer or by similar employers, voluntarily accepted by the employee, furnished in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local law, provided primarily for the benefit of the employee rather than the employer, and supported by accurate employer records of the actual costs incurred. "Reasonable cost" is defined narrowly. It is not more than the actual cost to the employer, it cannot include a profit, and it is capped at fair rental value if that is lower.
State rules layer on top, and in the two states where TurnSeasons sees the most employer housing they are considerably tighter than the federal floor.
Colorado. The Division of Labor Standards and Statistics allows a lodging credit only where the housing is voluntarily accepted, primarily for the employee's benefit and convenience, and recorded in a written agreement, and the credit is capped at $25 or $100 weekly depending on lodging type, or less if market value or actual employer cost is lower. Colorado's 2026 minimum wage is $15.16 an hour, and the lodging credit is measured against that obligation.
California. Meals and lodging cannot be credited against the minimum wage without a voluntary written agreement, and Wage Order 10, which covers the amusement and recreation industry including ski areas, sets hard 2026 ceilings: $79.46 per week for a room occupied alone, $65.59 per week for a shared room, and two-thirds of ordinary rental value for an apartment up to $954.43 per month. Two other provisions in that section matter for staff housing specifically. Employees may not be required to share a bed. And where living at the place of employment is a condition of employment, the employer may not charge rent above those listed values at all.
The distinction between a wage credit and rent an employee pays out of net wages is not cosmetic, and whether a given arrangement is one or the other depends on facts a blog post can't see: who controls the unit, whether acceptance was genuinely voluntary, what the written agreement says, and what your actual costs are. This is worth twenty minutes with employment counsel or a call to your state labor agency before the number goes in a public posting, because the posting is the document a wage claim will be measured against later.
Dates, perks, and the February commute
Say the number, not "competitive"
Hard start and end dates belong in the posting, not in the offer letter. A seasonal worker is stacking a summer somewhere else onto the back of your winter, and "November through April" costs you candidates who need to know whether they're free on April 12.
Same discipline on the perks. A season pass is worth a specific dollar amount; say it, or at minimum name the pass. A shift meal is worth something; say what. If you offer a meal benefit in California, note that Wage Order 10 also caps what can be credited for meals, at $6.10 for breakfast, $8.42 for lunch, and $11.28 for dinner in 2026.
Colorado employers have a further obligation that catches a lot of small operators by surprise: under the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, a job posting must disclose the compensation or a good-faith range, a general description of benefits and other compensation, and the anticipated application deadline, along with how to apply. The state's job postings and hiring page collects those requirements. "Competitive wages, DOE" is not a compliant Colorado posting.
What the drive actually looks like in February
If you don't provide housing, the honest version of that is a paragraph about where your staff live and what getting to work costs them in the middle of winter.
In Summit County that means Silverthorne and Dillon at the near end and Leadville over Hoosier Pass at the far end, a pass that gets closed and chain-controlled through the winter. In Jackson Hole it means Victor and Driggs on the Idaho side of Teton Pass, a commute that is thirty to forty-five minutes in good conditions and can vanish entirely on an avalanche-control morning. Around Tahoe it means Truckee and Kings Beach for the north shore and, for some workers, Carson City and Reno.
Naming the town is the minimum. Naming the drive, the pass, the closure risk, and whether there's a transit option is what separates a posting that retains people in January from one that loses two staff in the first storm cycle. On TurnSeasons, the nearby-housing field on a job posting exists for exactly this, and filling it in is the highest-leverage thirty seconds in the whole form.
The ad language ski-town postings get wrong
"Looking for a young, energetic team" is not a vibe. It's an age-discrimination exposure.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects applicants and employees who are 40 or older and applies to private employers with 20 or more employees. It generally makes it unlawful to include age preferences, limitations, or specifications in job notices or advertisements, with an age limit permitted only in the rare case where age is a bona fide occupational qualification. The EEOC's guidance on prohibited employment policies and practices uses "recent college graduates" as its own example of an ad that may discourage people over 40 from applying and may violate the law. "Young," "college students," "energetic twenty-somethings," and "ski bums wanted" all sit in the same neighborhood.
Two things employers commonly get wrong about this:
The 20-employee threshold is a limit on federal coverage, not a safe harbor. State fair-employment statutes frequently reach much smaller employers, and the thresholds vary state to state. A twelve-person outfitter should check with its state civil rights or labor agency rather than assuming headcount puts it outside age law entirely.
And the posting itself is evidence. Unlike a hallway conversation, an ad is written, dated, screenshot-able, and often still cached months later. It is the cheapest possible thing to get right and one of the easier things for a plaintiff to point at.
Colorado adds two more advertising rules worth knowing. Under the Chance to Compete Act, an employer may not state in an application or advertisement that a person with a criminal history may not apply. And under the Job Application Fairness Act, effective July 1, 2024, employers may not ask for age-identifying information such as date of birth or dates of attendance or graduation on an initial application, with narrow exceptions for legal or safety-based age requirements.
None of this requires you to write a bloodless posting. "Fast-paced kitchen, four to six covers per station, snowboarding at 3pm if you close the night before" describes the job and the life without describing the applicant's age.
A skeleton you can paste
Role, employer, town. One line. Dates. Hard start, hard end, plus training dates if separate. Pay. Rate or good-faith range. Tipped roles: cash wage and realistic tip range. Housing. Status, cost, shared or private, what's included, move-in and move-out, how the money moves. If no housing. Towns staff commute from, the drive, and the winter reality. Other compensation. Pass, meals, gear, transit, end-of-season bonus, each with a number. Schedule. Days per week, shift lengths, whether split shifts happen, holiday expectations. How to apply and by when.
That is eight lines and it will out-convert most of what's on the board in August.
When you're ready, you can post a role and reach workers searching for jobs and housing in the same place, or start from the town you're hiring in. And before you set the schedule those hires will work, the wage-and-hour rules for seasonal operations are worth an hour of your time.