I love the simplicity of Zoom Rooms.

Lodging is one of those things that comes with built-in uncertainty at the intersection of lead time, price, availability, and, of course, life.

Book too early and you may get sick and the price may go down.
Book too late and you may end up paying more or all rooms may be filled.

Zoom Rooms give the skier a chance to lock in a set rate for a randomly wanted or needed last-minute room. But at the same time they allow the resort to presell rooms in a way that doesn’t tie down inventory or prevent bigger bookings from higher-paying guests.

Boyne
Sugarloaf was the first, as far as I know, to come out with this concept in 2012. Back then the format went as follows:

• Cost: $99/card (1 card = 1 night)
• Transferable: Yes
• Blackout dates: None
• Availability: No rooms left, no dice
• Reservation: can only be made within 48 hours of the night you’ll stay

A couple weeks ago I noticed that another resort in their family, Boyne, was doing the same thing this year after trying it in previous seasons.

The only tweaks, as far as I can tell, is a limit of 8/person (I can’t find Sugarloaf’s original details, but I think their limit was 3-4), a quantity limit or 300 to avoid overselling (this may be the same as Sugarloaf, but again, I think it was slightly less), and can only be redeemed within 24 hours of the night you want to stay.

But by all accounts, it’s the same simple, clever concept as the original.

Filling last minute rooms and driving advanced sales seem like two goals that could never be met simultaneously. With some clever packaging, pricing, and limits, Sugarloaf and Boyne have done just that.

Do they work?
Glad to see these are sticking around. Well, sorta. Less than 3 hours after getting the initial email, I saw this in my inbox:

Just under $30,000 of lodging revenue in 180 minutes? Nice work, Boyne. Nice work.

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.