Bossman, el capitan, chief, head honcho. Whatever nickname you attach to your GM, President, or CEO, there is something about getting information directly from the top. You don’t trust a grocery bagger or fast-food cashier with your important complaint, you’d much rather “speak with their manager.” And so it goes with skiing, you trust what the guy behind the Twitter profile says to a point, same goes for Facebook. If the GM says so, however, now that is a different story altogether.

A lot of marketing value comes from the guy that runs the whole resort taking time to explain what is going on at the mountain and why. It played a valuable role during the race to open and I believe the value continues throughout the year. A simple way to allow your skiers to build a personal connection with the big cheese is through a blog. Here are four GM/CEO blogs to take a look at and get some ideas from.

Telluride – Dave Riley
Rarely updated but good content. When Dave posts you are sure to see lots of great operating details, pictures, and personal perspective.
http://blog.tellurideskiresort.com/blogs/davesblog/default.aspx

Arapahoe Basin – Alan Henceroth
This is the best of these blogs, in my opinion. Frequently updated, lots of personal perspective, and great insider information.
http://arapahoebasin.blogspot.com/

Boston Mills Brandywine – JR
Also good content but a little big vague on who “JR” is. Not so much of a blog as a page that is occasionally updated but a good resource that I see “lower” employees reference on a regular basis.
http://www.bmbw.com/notes-gm

Mount Snow – Kelly Pawlak
The content over at Mount Snow is solid. Lots of fun personal perspective from lift rides and running the resort in general. Not a separate blog but just a type of blog post mixed in with their normal posts.
http://mountsnow.com/gm-blog-lucky-50/

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.