Ski Resort Marketing
Ideas Inspiration Analysis

Ski Resort Marketing

SlopeFillers provides daily ideas, inspiration, and analysis for ski resort marketers.
Yes, I know Twitter stats are messed up. But I'm too busy nuzzling my firstborn to fix it so you'll just have to wait. :)

I Ride Park City Launches New Site, New Print Ads

July 18th, 2011

Park City just launched their new “I Ride Park City” website, supporting the focus they’ve given to terrain parks at the resort. While the design is far from flashy, I really, really like it. Terrain parks are huge, but having a park doesn’t guarantee that riders will flock to your rail gardens to jib away their winter. At this point in the game, it takes marketing, good marketing, which I think Park City has done very well.

Super Simple Layout and Navigation
Aside from a simple, clean layout, four clear options in the nav area up top highlight the biggest selling points. Namely:

  1. Parks & Pipe – If you’ve got the goods like Park City, show it off.
  2. All Stars – If you’ve enlisted some big riders to call your park home like, oh, I dunno, Tom Wallisch, Scotty Arnold, and Tanner Hall, put their names up in lights as some social proof that your park rocks
  3. Events – I love seeing a dedicated spot for this. Events are huge, for both watching and competing. Glad to see this come front and center.
  4. Resort Info – So you love the stuff you’ve seen on the site? This tab lets you act on by providing directions, pass prices, etc.

I’m sure could think of other things to stick in the main nav, but I also think Park City has done a great job of identifying the core and sticking to it. I’ve always hammered that websites need to do something…they need to have a job which is why I love the fact that you can buy passes directly from this site. However, I would like to see this feature given a little bit more focus throughout in the form of a small sidebar banner that highlights season pass deals, ticket specials, etc.

Highly Visual
When you scroll down through their posts, every one of them has tons of photos and videos. Skiers are visual people, especially when it comes to parks dedicated to highly visual displays of tricks. I’m impressed by the attention they’ve given to this fact.

Also, these posts are extremely short matching the attention span of the average internet user, and below each is the listing of the rest of the posts to encourage continued browsing.  I have a feeling their site analytics are going to look awesome.

Print Ads
The print ads maintain the same visual style as the site, bridging the feel and tone as print readers come to the site. They use the big names as testimonials of the park, are easy to consume, and drive readers to the website, which, in turn, gets them psyched on the park, and hopefully motivated enough to buy a pass and give it a whirl.

My UHAPOBLB Rating
My unscientific, hyper-accurate, purely opinion based, and likely biased rating (out of 10): 8.86


  • http://www.ericinparkcity.com Eric Hoffman

    What did the Russian judge score?! Just kidding Gregg, thanks for the great summary of the new I Ride Park City site. I don't really have much to add aside from the fact that you'll definitely be seeing a lot more content flowing into IRPC as the season progresses which is indeed what IRPC is intended to highlight and feature. Glad you like and thanks again for the mention!

    • GreggBlanchard

      Glad to hear more good stuff is coming. I'll keep my checking up on the site. Best of luck!

Industry Social Snapshot

Totals and averages from all North American ski resorts' social media activity.
total views new yest mo grwth
39,939,983 12,260 1.21%
total fols/+1 new yest mo grwth
37,569 52 3.33%
avg score was yest 7-day
43.90 43.93 -0.26
total fols new yest mo grwth
340,324 298 2.62%
total page likes new yest mo grwth
257,640 51 0.53%

Resort Social Dashboard

View any North American resort's social media performance & compare them to other mountain resorts.

About: Gregg Blanchard

SlopeFillers is run by marketer and skier / snowboarder, Gregg Blanchard. He loves writing in 3rd person, meeting the talented people who read this blog, pretending to be a web developer, and eating reuben sandwiches. Need more dirt on Southern Edwards, Colorado's most famous ski marketing blogger taller than 6'?
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