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Ski Resort Marketing

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Taking the “Name 100 Resorts Challenge” to the Next Level: Skier Visits

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August 28th, 2012By: Gregg Blanchard

Since the first version of the social media dashboards, one things has always been missing: skier visits. Which bums me out, honestly, because skier visits are often thought of as the universal common denominator for resort comparisons. They’re used to determine everything from membership fees to elegibility for awards. But what if we could use these numbers for marketing comparisons and benchmarks?

Imagine the possibilities…
For example, imagine sticking your resort’s skier visits into a form and instantly seeing how many fans a resort like yours has (we used a small sample to try that today with the Stash, but this is just the tip of the potential iceberg), how fast they’re growing, what their engagement is, if they are on Pinterest (or not), if they are on Google+ (or not), how many times a week they tweet, how often they’re mentioned on Twitter, and much, much more.

Missing this piece from marketing analyses has always felt like a insight-sucking void of information. Hopefully, that will change starting today.

Are You Industry Savvy?
Let me be clear that I do NOT want you to share the skier visits of the resort you work for if you are not supposed to. Instead, I want you to make your best guess of skier visit numbers for as many resorts as you are familiar with.

Are you pretty sure Killington has X# number of visits? Perfect. Think you read that Keystone gets X# skiers a year from a local article? Awesome. It’s not a one-precise-source idea, but rather the average of many good guesses that can paint a deeply insightful marketing picture.

Game? Start With a State…
All the resorts in North America are grouped by state. It’s pretty simple and shouldn’t take you more than a minute or two to crank out as many as you have insights on. Click on a state you’re familiar with to get started:

ABAKALAZBCCACOCTGAIAIDILIN
MAMBMDMEMIMNMOMTNBNCNDNH
NJNLNMNSNVNYOHONORPAPEQC
RISDSKTNUTVAVTWAWIWVWYYT

  • Ken

    Are you going to publish the results?

    • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

      The first step will be integrating them the dashboards for comparisons. I'm not sure if a totally public list is a great idea, but we'll have to see how much data we get first. Definitely taking it one step at a time. I do a ton of analyses that this data would be helpful for, so I'll start with that and see what other good it can do.

  • http://www.wackytourist.com Shawn_Alain

    I'm really interested in these results, I hope you get quite a few resorts participating.

    • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

      Me too, I've been wishing I had these numbers for over a year. Finally decided to try to do something about it :)

  • Ken

    Greg, yes, I hope you can. I fully realize that this is the most sensitive data in the industry, but it would also be helpful for companies (like mine) that are trying to target the right sized resort for products and services.

    As for the resorts themselves, they need to know how well their social media campaigns are succeeding measured against similar size (skier days) resorts for proper assessment.

    • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

      Agreed, Ken. There is a huge comparison benefit that comes of having this data. Just have to consult people smarter than me in the industry for what to do with it after that :)

  • http://mountsnow.com Matt

    I know a lot from a few years ago. Last year was a whole different animal though.

    • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

      Even averages from a couple years ago would be awesome (if not better and more useful) than last year. Any insight you have would be awesome. Thanks, Matt!

Industry Social Snapshot

Totals and averages from all North American ski resorts' social media activity.
total views new yest mo grwth
39,516,920 24,864 1.19%
total fols/+1 new yest mo grwth
36,519 38 4.99%
avg score was yest 7-day
45.32 45.40 -0.68
total fols new yest mo grwth
332,741 293 2.56%
total page likes new yest mo grwth
256,431 51 0.71%
total fols new yest mo grwth
13,273 12,435 4.67%

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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