I don’t think it’s too far fetched to say that mountain resort golf courses are less popular than mountain resort ski trails.

There are, naturally, many steps along this spectrum of popularity, but many mountain courses wouldn’t complain with a bit more awareness and golf travelers trying their product.

Which is why I wonder if there’s something to learn from two places.

Place #1: 21st Century Ski Passes
Let’s recap one interesting point of one interesting pass product that has come about during the ski pass renaissance of the last half-decade.

“Remember that the Mountain Collective isn’t necessarily designed to be profitable on it’s own. Instead, it’s designed to drive sampling among destination skiers from new, different, or even existing markets that will (hopefully) convert to repeat guests later on.”

Among all the goals of The Mountain Collective is a simple one: getting people in a certain market (wealthy traveling skiers) to try their resort(s).

Sound familiar?

Place #2: Davis County, Utah
Driving home from Salt Lake the other day I spotted an interesting offer displayed on a roadside billboard. I mentally wrote down the URL www.playindavis.com, promptly forgot it, and then remembered it again the next time I drove by.

Here’s what it says on the site:

Buy a heavily-discounted pass, get more golf than most folks will probably use but affordable enough you only have to use a small amount of to get full value, but packaged in a way to drives…yes…sampling.

Lots of golfers trying courses they may not otherwise had visited.

Maybe
I really like this idea. A single golf course may not have the standalone value to justify a big marketing or PR expense required to get coverage on key channels.

But get 4 or 5 or 10 of those resort courses to come together, create a product that lifts all of them equally, and suddenly you have not just a really attractive offer but the economies of scale to get those courses into bigger conversations.

There are many lessons we’re trying to carry over from ski to summer, maybe this should be one of them.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.