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Lodging

An ode to the Vail Resorts’ classic 96-hour lodging sale.

Gregg Blanchard   /  

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Amazon Prime day. How this giant has created their own shopping holiday. One that their customers remember, anticipate, and plan for.

Yes, Amazon is huge and yields an absurd amount of power on the global market, but every brand has some degree of influence on their market. What Amazon is doing is simply focusing months worth of promotions into a single day to create a single, powerful marketing moment. So while it seems like Amazon is the only one who could pull this off, when you look around your local market you’ll find lots of examples of companies who have successfully done the same thing in their little corner of the economy.

  • In Utah (and many other places) during my youth, Labor Day ski sales were just as significant in the ski season as opening day. SNIAGRAB was just one, but the most visible.
  • During college, a local grocery store had crazy deals for students the first week back. I don’t remember the name, but we all knew to head there for our cold cereal needs when we were moving back in.
  • A slushy drink called Frazil has successfully trained my children to watch for Free Frazil Fridays that happen every June

Through a strong message and a lot of consistency, these brands had trained their market to look forward to and plan their spending behavior around these moments.

This may not have been built up like some of these, but an example from the ski industry that I think about often is Vail Resorts’ classic 96-hour sale that happens every February without fail.

The 96-hour sale has been going on a long time and happens across every mountain in their portfolio. These are luxury brands, mind you, so they’re not doing this ahead of and for big holiday weeks, they’re waiting until the big holidays are behind them and the last few gaps of the season need to be filled.

They’ve also given this sale a simple but recognizable logo to visually anchor this annual campaign in the minds of their market.

For a few years there I remember an August version as well with the same goal to fill those off-peak moments, but in recent years the main focus seems to have been pushing hard in February to finish the season strong.

But even with a ebbs and flows of this idea over the years, they have been absolutely consistent now for over 12 years.

I love this. In a marketing world of one-and-done campaigns, I appreciate the discipline to stick with something that works in a way that allows it to snowball.

And, honestly, I think there’s a lot more opportunity for stuff like this in our industry. Find a goal, wrap it in a moment, give it a name, be super consistent, sprinkle in some patience, and you might just find yourself creating your own, small-but-meaningful marketing celebration in your market.

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