It was curiosity that started SlopeFillers, and it was curiosity that drives it forward. As a marketer/skier/snowboarder, the product of skiing always fascinated me which was one of the factors that led me to start this blog. Every week I have an excuse to satisfy my curiousity in some shape or form and share what I find with the ski resort marketing world.

What I’d like to do in this post is tell you what unanswered questions I currently have.
I’m doing this for three reasons:

1. I want you to know what direction to blog is heading and what content you can expect
2. To see if any readers of the blog can answer some of my questions
3. Ask you if you have any questions you’d like me to try to answer for you

My Questions (yes, there are quite a few…)

• I want to learn about season pass pricing. It is fascinating to me that the EPIC pass to so many world class resorts can sell for $629 and a regular season pass to a single resort can run $1,000 or higher
• I want to learn about best practices for capturing email addresses on ski resort websites
• I want to learn about who is putting an emphasis on SEO and what keywords are most beneficial
• I want to learn about the strategies behind bundling products (tickets, lodging, flights, etc) together and the pricing of those bundles
• I want to learn how marketing technologies that are being used in other industries can be used in the ski industry
• I want to study how resort merchandise sales have been used as branding tools
• I want to learn about ski movie sponsorships and the reasons for /returns on giving away a free pass at ski movies
• I want to learn about the biggest marketing challenges ski resort marketers face
• I want to find ways mom-and-pop resorts have applied big-name resort marketing strategies on small scales with small budgets
• I want to learn what backgrounds and skills the most successful resort marketers have that led them to where they are
• I want to discover how resorts are using web video to the fullest
• I want to find patterns to successful season pass sales programs, events, and prices
• I want to find what new products are services are being created to help resort marketing
• I want to study more of the history of ski resort marketing and how it has shaped present day principles
• I want to find out who is getting the best return on the cost of their print ads and what we can learn from these ads
• I want to discover more local partnerships resorts are making and find patterns to the success of each
• I want to analyze lift ticket prices between competing resorts based on their size and perceived value
• I want to analyze discounts that resorts offer and see their efficacy and balance between the normal ticket price
• I want to learn what ways the online marketing of a resort can be automated
• I want to analyze what resorts are using online lift ticket purchasing system and with what results
• I want to identify specific patterns as to why 10,000, legitimate Facebook fans means huge participation for some resorts and beans for others
• I want to figure out a way to better rank or measure the value of a resorts social media presence

I could go on, but I’ll stop there…for now ;)

So, back to my reason for listing these.  Now you know what I want to learn, now two more questions:

• Do you have the answer to one of these questions?
• Do you have questions you’d like me to try to answer?

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.