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So there I was, searching through resort Black Friday emails looking for some unique tactics or ideas in this year’s efforts.

A handful of resorts were had some quality strategies around things that can scale (like gift cards), experiences (like dining), and low demand stuff (like shoulder season, midweek lodging), but then I came across an email from Mt Shasta.

At first I was left scratching my head and asking:

“How are they getting away with doing extra discounts on season passes at this point in the year?”

And then I saw it, see if you can spot it too.

They weren’t discounting relative to what they’ve been charging recently, they were discounting compared to their peak pricing.

Now, I don’t have all the historicals on Mt Shasta’s pass sales, but what I do know is that they opened pass sales back in March like most resorts did while skiing was still on their skiers’ brains, probably got a bunch of folks to lock in and then…

…I couldn’t find much.

Until now.

In other words, the best I can read this, they wanted to do one more pass push before the season, but instead of choosing some arbitrary day to choose as a deadline, they aligned their season pass push to Black Friday so their final pass discount was also, technically, a Black Friday deal. Instead of trying to build their own wave of attention and spending patterns, they’re building on top of an existing wave of attention and spending patterns..

In other words, it’s not necessarily a special discount, it’s just a really cleverly timed discount because they recognized that a perfect time to kick off the season and make a final season pass push also happens to be the biggest shopping holiday on the year.

Incredibly simple, super smart, and, hopefully, a successful way to sell a few more passes before the season starts.

I love it.

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.