This week I’ll be reporting some of the marketing goodness that came from this year’s NSAA National Convention and Tradeshow. It was great to meet many of you and many thanks again to NSAA for providing a press pass on such short notice.

Just to wrap up the NSAA report posts for the week, I thought I’d quickly share a few trends from the convention. You know how it is, after a week of sessions, no one comes out and says, “The theme we want you to notice is _______,” but you start to see patterns in the topics discussed. Nothing long-winded today, just a quick overview of what vibes I picked up on.

Mobile Apps v EpicMix
From app developers I talked with to panel members, everyone seems to like at least one aspect of EpicMix and sees it as at least the immediate future of enhancing the experience. Developers are trying to match the functionality with apps but are challenged by battery life and the possible inaccuracies of GPS. The theme I saw is that over the next couple years this is going to be a big focus: whoever can create a way to deploy an EpicMix-like system at any given mountain using the nearly overhead-less framework of mobile devices without draining battery life is going to be sitting pretty.

Print is Not Dead but Video is Big
Print budgets may have been trimmed back, but print is still a focus for many. The vibe I got is that instead of just throwing up any old ad, print in today’s industry will take a level of creativity and data, derived from testing, to make those ads continue to work. On the flip side, even the magazine companies are putting a huge focus on video. Create exciting videos with a viral nature is something that resorts will be putting more and more resources toward.

Advanced Purchasing
Vail Resorts know it, Liftopia knows it, CardDog even talked about it. Most everything seemed to have a hint of driving advanced ticket purchasing. The concept doesn’t seem to be anything new, but the need to execute is growing quickly. However, getting people to buy their tickets long before they know what the snow or weather is going to be like that day, of course, had it’s challenges and the resorts that can balance that act will come out winners.

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.