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Was the Upset Whitefish Skier Wrong in His Viral Complaint? Does it Matter?

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August 31st, 2012By: Gregg Blanchard

On Sunday, a disgruntled Whitefish Mountain Resort Facebook fan, upset by a $20 price increase, took to the resort’s timeline to vent his frustrations in what can only be described as a language that vaguely resembles English. Okay, I’m being harsh, but take a look:

“so I just heard your passes are up to 580$ ?????? do you realize how absolutely absurd that is? you can ski 6 different resorts for 280$ in the tahoe area, and prices are similar for colorado MULTI resort deals. your prices have gone up every single year since ownership of the mountain has changed, and honestly i have found that hardly anything has improved, if not gotten worse. i love you BIG MOUNTAIN not stupid ass whitefish mountain resort… still the lamest name ever. but seriously 580? i guess bill foley wants his mountain to be 99%er free.”

Who is going to break the news to this kid that, a), the dollar sign goes before the amount and six question marks fail to change the importance of the question and instead make you look like a 14 year old girl asking her friend if a certain boy really does like her?????!??!?! That’s harsh too, I know, but here’s the lesson I take away from this and every other social media situation: it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter how bad his grammar was.
It doesn’t matter how messed up his puntuation was.
It doesn’t matter if he sounded like a teenage girl texting her BFFs.
If doesn’t even matter if he was wrong.

What matters is the fact that 700 people agree with him and 200 had agreed within the first 20 minutes. Why did a poorly written comment gain such traction? I have no idea. But that doesn’t matter either. What matters is that it did.

So….
We’re all still learning how to best reply to situations like this. To Nick Polumbus’ credit (Whitefish’s Marketing Director), he did a fine job. An article about the situation provided a pretty solid recap in which he:

  • Put the feedback in a positive light
  • Outlined reasons for the price
  • Outlined reasons why other places can charge less
  • Addressed other concerns

Was everyone happy with his response? Of course not. There’s this thing about getting riled up, logic goes right out the window. But the response was honest, timely, and clear. That’s about as well as you can do.

–
Here’s the full response:
http://skiwhitefish.com/FacebookResponse.pdf


  • http://www.wackytourist.com Shawn_Alain

    Great response Whitefish. You responded with a very positive tone and in a way that educated people. That really did go viral for a resort with only 13000+ followers.

    I recommend any fellow Social Media people reading this, if you think how they handled it was good you should go ahead and let them know in that thread to give 'em a little encouragement in a thread with so much negativity.

    • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

      Agreed, these "viral" posts are never easy, Nick really did an awesome job.

  • johnsonjoe

    A very nice, well thought out, response from Mr. Polumbus and the crew from Whitefish.

  • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

    Totally agree.

  • Jess Downing

    Thanks for the feedback/encouragement. My "favorite" complaint was that we didn't respond within 2 hours of the post (Sunday night)… they're mad we raise prices, but expect us to have someone monitoring FB 24 hrs a day?? :)

    • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

      I thought that was a bit ironic as well. ;) Ah, the joys of marketing in the age of social media…

    • http://www.wackytourist.com Shawn_Alain

      I also find the first comment of "well said" funny too. It was nothing but well said, I'm sure their English teacher would be slapping him on the side of the head haha.

  • Nick Polumbus

    Gregg, thanks for the coverage and your take on the situation – I'm curious to hear/see additional thoughts from this crew. Anyway, a few additional thoughts from our end:
    We're very, very lucky to work in an industry that inspires so much passion from, well, everyone involved. In times like these I remind myself of that. Often.

    For us at the resort, the whole thing would have been way more fun if the original post was something like: "Hey, I noticed the pass price went up $20 this year, what gives?" We have no problem treating people with respect – we have to and we want to, but getting a little on the front end is cool too.

    We resort marketeers and other concerned resort management talk a lot about the things that I was able to write in the response that was posted. Coming up with a proactive way to put those things out in the world without sounding like you're trying to justify things is an art I struggle with. Being defensive is easy and sometimes necessary, but how do we get proactive about the challenges of our industry in the smartest way is something we all need to work on – or at least I do. This will be fun to continue to work on with the evolving info tools we have (FB, etc).

    Finally, audience is everything. The group that got fired up was, for the most part, really quite young. There is a clear need and desire for information and respect from this younger generation. But I did keep reminding myself of the fact that there are a lot of supporters out there not engaged on this level.

  • http://www.rightnowinc.com Chris

    IMHO, you will always be judged by your response more than the first criticism. So, choose your words wisely – which you did. People will see the thoughtfulness and thorough vetting and appreciate that you are willing to engage transparently.

  • http://www.mediawithak.com/about Alex Kaufman

    Never in the history of ski area management has there been such an effective and effecient way to gather and address the many negatively slanted "uninformed" customers who permeate ski towns east and west. Now, Facebook gathers them together on a regular basis for a helpful serving of reality. Serve them properly (as above) and you'll enjoy this golden age.

  • http://www.shayboarder.com Shayboarder

    Appropriate response and well handled to address the concerns of everyone who posted in the comments.

    I liked that the original author of the comment came back and posted saying how much he loved the mountain, sticking up for the bashing of employees and had appreciated the response from the mountain.

    My favorite response:
    Any coffee shack visitors out there? If you drink 3 lattes a week for a year, at an average cost of $3.50/per you would spend $546/year. That's about the cost of season pass…

    I'm a coffee drinker so that hit home.

    • http://www.slopefillers.com GreggBlanchard

      Great points, Shay. I'm not a coffee drinker, but looking at those stats it makes me glad I'm not ;) That's a perfect example though of how affordable skiing really can be from the right perspective. For a few hundred bucks a year, we get unlimited access to thousands of acres of terrain serviced by multi-million dollar lifts and trails groomed each night. Amazing.

  • jasonmacqueen

    Sweet response Nick.

    Even sweeter when you consider how many ways that could have been mishandled. For example I wonder how this would have gone if Whitefish had:
    Deleted the post…
    Dismissed the post as a bunch of kids being kids and either not replying or doing it in a condescending way. Maybe including some of the grammar points from Gregg’s post 
    I find sometimes there is pressure from non social media in the company people to take one of those courses. Definitely a time to stick to your guns.

    Also a good demonstration of why you need anyone who is watching social media at any particular instance to be level headed and well trained. It would have been interesting to see the response if Nick had replied with the first thing to come into his head after reading the post.

  • Pingback: Mountain Creek & A-Basin Try Multi-Year Approaches to Pass Pricing and Options : Ski Resort Marketing - SlopeFillers.com

Industry Social Snapshot

Totals and averages from all North American ski resorts' social media activity.
total views new yest mo grwth
39,477,480 13,075 1.26%
total fols/+1 new yest mo grwth
36,400 40 4.83%
avg score was yest 7-day
45.60 45.73 -0.80
total fols new yest mo grwth
331,911 270 2.68%
total page likes new yest mo grwth
256,339 48 0.73%
total fols new yest mo grwth
9,287 -3,876 -26.28%

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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