Park City Mountain Resort didn’t just make a new website, they made a bet.

They didn’t bet on good snowmaking temps. They didn’t put money on a 6 year old destined to be the “next Shaun White”. There’s no over-under on their snowfall this year.

Instead, they’ve gone all-in on content.

Pick a Page, Any Page…
Take, for instance, the “Vacation Planning” page. The top 600 pixels are devoted to vacation planning with a few links to more information. Below that, however, is an area, equal in size, with their recent blog posts.

Below that is a current view of the mountain surrounded by more blog posts.

After that, we find another 400-500 pixel tall area for a photo and video gallery followed by an equal area devoted to a visual naviation through popular areas of their website like snow reports, events, and stories.

They’ve taken the boring label of “blog” off real-time, highly relevant content and put it front and center.

The Tradeoff
We could talk about a lot of things with PCMR’s new site. The responsive layout, the smooth new design, the simplified top nav, but stop by their site for a minute and you’ll begin to see that their new web property has much more in common with PickAnySkiMag.com than TheResortDownTheRoad.com.

In effect, PCMR is betting that indirect, valuable, less salesy content will be better for their brand and bottom line than direct, less valuable, sales focused copy.

It’s a risk, yes, but I can’t help but think it will pay off.

Not Perfect
I can’t think of any other resort website that has taken this kind of approach. It’s different and untested. For that reason, it’s not perfect either. They’re breaking new ground.

Will they need to replace some of those content blocks with offers to drive more sales? Maybe.
Will they find that visitors read and read but never act? Perhaps.
Will the rest of the content get in the way of the answers visitors are looking for? There’s always that chance.

I, however, would put my money on PCMR. This website is more than a brochure, it’s a narrative that will continue to be told as the season comes and goes. Woven into that story is the motivation to come and a reason to keep coming back.

I like their odds.

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.