To wrap up this week I wanted to share what one resort is doing against the tide of consolidation. A resort that I’ve always been impressed by.

Before I do, let me clarify something. No more than 48 hours ago I penned these words:

“if losing the ‘soul’ or ‘character’ of resorts (something I think only we care about and, to a large extent, exaggerate / falsely-project on resorts based our bias towards their owners) is our worst-case scenario, that’s a good sign to me.”

In a way, core skiers are a sort of CEO on the idea of “soul”. We are the ones who created this idea and, so being, we decide what it means, we decide who has it, we decide when they lose it.

There is nothing tangibly different between soul-full resorts and soul-less resorts in terms of the snow that falls or the lifts that run or the style of the village at the base. But the fact remains, to a small group of core skiers and industry members, this is a real thing.

Even more, it’s an important thing.

Enter Magic
What’s surprised me most about this wave of consolidation is how little response I’ve seen from the resorts that hold the antidote to this perceived poison.

One ski area, however, has been taking advantage: Magic Mountain.

https://twitter.com/thepatmorgan/status/1004476018386718721

Now, this sign is very well-played alone, but this is not some one-off soundbite, it’s part of the position Magic has carved out for itself.

For example, when Geoff writes a blog post, here’s his signature:

A line that’s repeated in their Twitter and Instagram bios:

What about YouTube? Another angle on the same story:

“We are a ski area, not a ski resort. We offer skiing and snowboarding, not all the other junk. We appeal to those who want to go down a mountain on snow and enjoy it.”

The “mountain” page on their website leads with this tagline:

At a time when thousands of core-skiers are worried about the “soul” levels in skiing, Magic is staking their claim as the mountain with a plentiful supply.

TBD
Will this matter in the long run? I dunno. As skiers we’re really good about showing passion for a trend but not doing much more than throwing nostalgia at the problem.

So this effort may be the long-term difference between life and death for Magic or it may have no impact whatsoever, but I love the effort. I love how they’ve seen where things are going, recognized that some people aren’t totally stoked on that direction, and given those people a name to rally around.

And I think there are a lot more opportunities in our industry to do so than just this corner of Vermont.

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.