My Biggest Questions About Ski Resort Marketing
Gregg Blanchard /
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:
- I want you to know what direction to blog is heading and what content you can expect
- To see if any readers of the blog can answer some of my questions
- 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?