I sometimes feel I do too much critiquing and too little suggesting. Like, somehow, I’m the 400 pound, mullet-sporting guy on his 3rd beer at the baseball game yelling at the 2nd baseman to hustle. So, every once in a while on a Wednesday I’ll try to balance the scales a bit and put my own ideas up for display, analysis, and critique. (view all ‘WID’ posts).

One of the tough parts about blogging every day is coming up with new content 5 times a week. I’ve also come to find that there is a delicate balance between hitting my favorite key over and over and trying to play a nice melody with all the topics that could be covered. Recently, I wrote a post about why I feel EpicMix is an even smarter marketing tool than I thought. The gist is this: based on some Ryan Solutions research, there is a lot of value in getting passholders to use there pass more. Even if it’s just 2-3 more days on the mountain.

On that note, here are 10 (almost) free ways to get more of your skiers above that threshold where the effective ticket price drops below the cost of a day pass (many thanks to Ben Zeeb at Ryan Solutions for some of these ideas and sparking many others). A lot of these boil down to the marketing value of every day a passholder spends on the mountain. But that’s a question for another day :)

1) Powder Day Lift Access
A few times a year, make one of your lifts open to season passholders only on powder days.

2) Early Ups for Passholders
Once a week or month, give season passholders early access to a lift with some of your best carving terrain.

3) Buddy Pass
If someone has only used their pass 2-3 times this season, offer a a handful of half price (or more) lift tickets to a friend (one per day) when they ski together.

4) Win a Free Pass!
Enter everyone that uses their pass 10 or more times into a drawing to win a free pass or ski vacation.

5) Tiered Rewards
Provide rewards like lodging discounts, free rooms, free meals, better parking, etc. if they hit tiers of 5-10-15 days on the mountain.

6) Ask Them
Send an email to your passholders that have only skied a few days that, “you miss them” and to “come on up.”

7) Extra Operating Day
So this may be more expensive than the others, but the day after you close, have a special passholders only day to shred the last of the spring corn.

8) Hidden Reasons
Similar to EpicMix, without saying “ski more”, give away a different color logo sticker each week. If they can show you 10 or more at season’s end, they get a free piece of snazzy swag (okay, that one is lame, but hopefully you get the idea).

9) Push Early
Provide incentives for those that get lots of days in early (and thus develop a habit to continue through the year).

10) Sell Their Current ETP
Send an email with an autocalculated effective ticket price based on how many times they’ve been on the mountain. I probably wouldn’t use this for low-use skiers, but maybe the day their ETP drops below the price of a day pass, send them a congrats email and show them the value of skiing 4-5 more times.

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.