It seems a little ironic to me that I can’t stand a grocery store that requires me to have a special card to get their deals, even if the card is free, yet the thought of using a card to get deals at a ski resort is awesome. Maybe it has to do with the products, maybe it has to do with the amount of the discount, but even if that card gave me a 50% discount on Egg Nog (my favorite beverage this time of year) I still have trouble thinking I’d pass up a 10% discount on skiing given the choice between the two.

Reward cards are nothing new, but I don’t remember hearing about them until recently in the ski industry. So, they could be new, or it took me a while to look at things closely enough to see them. Likely the later. Either way, a reward card is a simple way to accomplish a couple, clear goals:

• Get skiers to come back over and over
• Like a grocery card, you can track “shopping” habits and use detailed skier info collected when the card was obtained as valuable market research

Here are a few examples to get the wheels turning:

Boreal iRide Reward Card
This card, to me, is the best deal of the ones I have seen. But two, get one free. Pretty hard to beat. The sign up form gets some solid information about the skier but doesn’t get so long that it dissuades them from signing up. To quote their site directly to make sure I’m not skewing things:

“Sign up for Boreal’s iRIDE rewards card today. Buy an adult all day lift ticket at Boreal on ANY 2 days during the 2010/2011 season and receive your 3rd day free.”

Details: http://rideboreal.com/winter/rates/iride

PEAKS Benefits
Pretty straight forward, earn points on your vacation and redeem them for stuff. Depending on the process of redemption this might be a brilliant way to encourage visitors to come back next year to redeem their points. In their words:

“PEAKS Rewards is a free membership program for guests at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Heavenly. With PEAKS you earn points for many of your purchases while on vacation – then you are rewarded with free lift tickets, ski school lessons, and more!”

Details: http://www.snow.com/peaks/peaks-rewards.aspx

Stowe Points Card
The Stowe Points Card does carry a $75 up-front fee but it reminds me a lot of the coupon books used as school fundraisers: spend $30 now to save a possible $100+ later. Here are some of the rewards according to Stowe’s website:

“Receive discounts on your lift ticket purchases in the winter and discounts on your greens fees at Stowe Country Club in the summer. Earn points on all your rental, lesson, retail, and food purchases. The points you earn can be redeemed for a free lift ticket or a free greens fee at Stowe Country Club. Your unused points will roll over year to year. It truly is a loyalty savings card!”

Full Details: http://www.stowe.com/tickets/points_card/

Small-Mid Sized Resorts
NOTE: A few weeks back I did a survey of blog readers and found that while people loved the content, smaller resorts felt left out or that many marketing ideas didn’t apply to them. So, I’m going to start adding areas like this more and more with ideas for them.
That said, I don’t see a rewards card as something that you have to have tied to a computer or software system. Even a simple punch card like some restaurants use (buy 6 meals get 1 free) would be a great way to encourage repeat visitors and have a great option to offer skiers that don’t ski quite enough to take the season pass route.

UPDATE: Dustin Schaefer from Loveland just let me know about Loveland’s PassCard. A slightly different setup, you pay for it up front and earn rewards at set purchase frequencies. Check out all the details here: http://www.skiloveland.com/ticketsandpasses/loveland_pass.aspx

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.