My home mountain, Beaver Mountain, is one that I have used in a variety of examples. Small and family owned, you can park less than 50 yards from the lift lines, even on a busy day. The reason for this proximity is pretty simple: there are no fancy lodges or hotels to get in the way. This works great for the local crew, but what about destination skiers? This is the far end of the continuum, somewhere in the middle is a resort that has some slopeside lodging options, but not enough to reach every skiers budget and needs that may want to visit. A situation similar to this exists at Durango Mountain Resort. Here’s the solution they, thanks to the efforts of some local groups like Durango Central Reservations, are running.

Buy Three Get the 4th Free
The package itself is very straightforward, buy three nights of lodging and lift tickets and get your fourth free. The uniqueness lies in the fact that you don’t have to stay at the resort, rather, you can choose from one of 10 lodging partners in town as well. According to Durango Central Reservation’s marketing coordinator Kory Sampson:

This is the 4th year of this program and it was really hatched to incent a longer stay in the area. We found over the years that (off-holiday) we were battling with how to increase the average nightly stay because we were all getting a lot of 2 night and 3 night stays. So we teamed up with the mountain to build the buy 3 get 4 promo to incent the longer stays. While the 4th night doesn’t really increase revenues because it is free, it does push those 2 nighters to 3 and it keeps them on the mountain and in town longer for ancillary spending which is good for the whole tourism economy.

Right now, about 25% of all rooms in Durango are part of this offer, a number which Kory expects to grow during the coming weeks. Promotion comes not only from Durango Central Reservations, but also from the Durango Tourism Office and Durango Mountain Resort. Some of their planned channels include:

• Print advertising
• E-newsletters
• PPC & Web advertising
• Billboards
• Ski show promotion

Kory reiterated that the reason this all worked was because it opened a bigger selection of price points for skier families on a budget as well as bring tourism revenue to the town as a whole, not just the resort or lodging partners, so everyone is excited to get on board and promote it. In fact, Kory couldn’t give exact specs on promotion simply because while there are lots of collective marketing efforts, each organization does much on their own to drive the program as a whole.

So if you are a resort with limited, or high-end lodging options, instead of losing the skiers that would love to shred your slopes but simply can’t afford the lodging packages you offer, maybe consider partnering with local hotels and tourism groups in a way that everyone benefits, including the skiers.

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.