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Growing Skiing
Nordic Valley’s free mountain orientation sessions are a brilliant idea for beginners.

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GREGG
BLANCHARD
   

The ski industry can be daunting for anyone that has never had the experience. Where to park? How do lessons work? Does my equipment fit correctly?

It’s one thing for me to admit that here, but it’s another to say that out loud to prospective skiers. The things is, though, that they’re already thinking it! The other thing is that those words above aren’t even mine, they’re from Nordic Valley on the page that outlines something they call Mountain Orientation. Here’s a quick overview:

“This FREE orientation is for true beginner skiers and snowboarders. The ski industry can be daunting for anyone that has never had the experience. Where to park? How do lessons work? Does my equipment fit correctly? This is a 90 minute lesson that will start at 10:30am and 1:30pm daily and has the information needed to get started on any mountain. The first segment of the lesson will be talking about parking, lift ticket process, rentals, equipment needed, boot fitting, and then going over the basics of skiing and snowboarding.

After this lesson, the participants should have the knowledge to go to any new area and have a general idea of where to begin their day on the slopes!”

I love this. I really, really love this.

We live in a world that is so incredibly foreign to the vast majority of the world’s population. Things we do instinctively just don’t make sense to others. I recently helped my brother get his kids on skis again which was a fantastic refresher of how many little things I had to help explain instead of assume they’d understand.

Resorts have spun up a bunch of great campaigns around this over the years:

  • Intro videos for beginners
  • Improved signage for those unfamiliar with the resort
  • Pre-arrivals with key info for first-timers

But just giving new skiers a place to go where everyone else is going to be just like them to learn how to navigate this new world?

It’s so simple and smart. Kudos, Nordic Valley.


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.

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