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SAM published an article this week by Iseult Devlin rounding up perspectives and insights from a bunch of resort marketing folks across a handful of topics.

I love pretty much everything resort marketing, but there was one line in this article – a quote from Alyeska’s Bayne Salmon – that really stood out to me. To give that a little context, though, let me back up first.

Over the last couple years, the word “support” has really helped me understand a few parts of my life and work.

For example, relative to Inntopia’s sales team or account management team, sometimes my marketing can feel like something else. Something separate. They do their thing, I do my mine. But the more time I spend in marketing the more I realize that, if I play my cards right, that doesn’t have to be true. Instead, we can work in parallel. We’re both still “doing our own thing,” but I’m doing it in response to the needs I see from them so my campaigns are aligned to their challenges, their hurdles, the questions they spend the most time answering.

And the best word I’ve found describe my role is support.

They go ahead full speed, I’m in the team car with stuff to help them keep moving as quickly and as effectively as possible.

Interestingly, the more time I spend with AI, the more this is how I describe my relationship to it. And this is exactly what Bayne was referring to in this article from SAM:

“AI can help us work faster, but it doesn’t replace our judgment, our understanding of our guests, or the real stories that happen on this mountain every day.”

This, in my opinion, is perfectly said.

And it gets at where AI can shine for resort marketing teams. You are the expert, you are the marketer, you are the “cyclist” hammering on the pedals at the front of the pack. AI isn’t doing the marketing for you, AI is in the team car handing you little bits of things you need to avoid slowing down or getting stuck on a task so you can keep your foot on the gas en route to your finish line:

• A block of copy you couldn’t find the right words for
• Insights from a set of big dataset you pulled
• A few extra campaign ideas based on your goals
• The right image from your library for a social post
• A draft quote from the GM for that press release
• Code fixes for a new form you’re trying to embed
• A checklist to avoid missing steps on a Google Ads campaign
• Search keywords you should consider for SEO-focused pages
• Helping you track progress toward goals and stay on course
• Creating a hero image for a blog post about AI :)

You’re doing the work, it’s just helping work faster and better.

I’m not the first person to say this – I’m not even the millionth probably – but I wanted to add my voice to the chorus because, at least for me, the best way I’ve found to both use AI and think about AI. AI isn’t some other thing, it’s an intern with a lot of helpful skills but no deep experience. You are the expert and you see the bigger picture, you simply have someone to delegate tasks as you move toward that point on the horizon.

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.