One of the most interesting moves Liftopia made back in the day was tiered pricing.

We’d seen it in a few industries before, but the idea of paying more for flexibility (ability to change dates) or less for a more rigid product with a little bit of risk (nonrefundable, can’t change dates) was a new thing for ski.

The behavior was easy to latch on to because we’d already been doing so with airlines, car rentals, etc. for years. It made a ton of sense.

One Thing

Right now there are a few things that have made skiing less simple, less convenient, and less spontaneous than it used to be. Growing up, I can’t ever remember being concerned about a parking lot filling up. Yet, this weekend, hundreds of thousands of skiers will head for the hills with a question lingering in their minds.

Will I even get to ski today?

Parking is a tricky one to solve at many resorts, but Mission Ridge has implemented a unique approach that takes a page from the playbook of trading flexibility for savings.

It’s a really interesting idea. If skiers have been wiling to make this trade in the past, why not now? It may have a bit of a learning curve among their market, but I see no reason that this couldn’t work incredibly well.

I Dig It

Resorts have offered a discount if a skier will embrace some uncertainty. Resorts have offered a discount if they’ll give up some flexibility. Those angles apply to this situation as well, but in this case the resort is offering a discount to skiers who also solve one of their problems.

We’ve seen it with carpooling discounts that alleviate parking pressure, so why not with other actions that accomplish the same goal? If parking is an issue, why not give a discount when they alleviate that problem.

Mission Ridge is doing a lot of stuff right and I’ll definitely tack this onto the list.

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.