It’s strange, but I’ve had a sneaking suspicion the past five seasons that I could sit back, wait for Mother Nature to grace us with some snow, and whatever I did before and after wouldn’t matter. I still worked my tail off, putting together emails, webpages and all our ‘traditional’ marketing tactics to try to get skiers and riders to the resort, but it really didn’t feel like I was necessarily making much of a difference.
This season is different, the ‘real’ snow didn’t come until later in December, the economy is cutting back on a lot of people’s vacation plans and many people are not going to take a ski or snowboard vacation whether there’s a foot of snow or ten times that. And while we can still generate some new business with a good strong snow message, it’s certainly not like it was in past years.
So, is it time to panic? I don’t think so. In fact, I think it’s an ideal time for ski resorts to try new ideas and ways to generate new revenues. It’s also great for interactive marketers like myself, as it’s an open door to implement social media strategies that we might not have had the opportunity to try just a year, or even a few months ago…exciting times, but I know that we must continue to press our efforts because now, just because it snows, doesn’t mean that they will come.
It’s been snowing all day and we’re all hoping that this will wind up being a big Utah powder dump. That’s because it’s time for us to dial in our game and get ready for what we’re hoping will be a Holiday crowd of happy skiers and riders. I’m feeling a bit pessimistic as I look at the current economic news of doom and gloom that’s hanging over our country and know that it will impact business at the resort. A great summary of current trends in the mountain resort business can be found the Industy News article, “Down but not Out: That’s the Latest Snapshot of North American Bookings,” and as you can tell from the title, it’s not the brightest outlook.
This Fall, I’ve been pushing harder than ever at my job: deploying emails, kicking our blog into high gear, polishing the resort’s presence on a slewofsocialmediasites, employing a variety of social media monitoring techniques, getting our video library up to par along with the usual chunk of tasks I have at the start of every ski season. In addition, it feels like I’m always thinking of something I should try, grabbing my laptop and plugging away at it until the wee hours…I know much of it won’t amount to anything in terms of business revenue, but I know it would gnaw at me if I didn’t.
The big picture tells me that without snow, there’s not all that much I can do to impact visits, because without snow our business doesn’t even open. So, now that snow has come, I’m going to get out, make some more turns, try to forget about the struggle at hand for awhile and hopefully “they will come.” And if it does turns out that not as people come this winter, then I guess it’s just more turns for me.
I just found the Utah Tourism TV ads that I mentioned in my A Tale of Two Lunches post from earlier this week. I’ve got to say that, although I’m not a fan of the medium that these ads are primarily intended for, this ad (in particular) gave me a chuckle, and as I say in the title of my blog, it is all about fun!
It’s strange, but I’ve had a sneaking suspicion the past five seasons that I could sit back, wait for Mother Nature to grace us with some snow, and whatever I did before and after wouldn’t matter. I still worked my tail off, putting together emails, webpages and all our ‘traditional’ marketing tactics to try to get skiers and riders to the resort, but it really didn’t feel like I was necessarily making much of a difference.
It’s been snowing all day and we’re all hoping that this will wind up being a big Utah powder dump. That’s because it’s time for us to dial in our game and get ready for what we’re hoping will be a Holiday crowd of happy skiers and riders. I’m feeling a bit pessimistic as I look at the 
