I’ve often said that virtually every resort investment is a story that needs some amount of marketing resources to tell. Whether it’s a new snowmaking pond or paving the parking lot, there is a ton of untapped marketing value in most every upgrade.

Sometimes it’s a little. Sometimes it’s a lot.

But the trick is to look for it because, every once in a while, you find a little vein of marketing gold.

Park City had one of those situations when their mid-mountain lodge, Summit House, needed an design upgrade. Now, modernizing the interior of a lodge isn’t a bad story, but it probably doesn’t stand out as an one that is deserving of much more than a sprinkling of time and attention to let your audience know about the whats and whys.

But someone on Park City’s team knew something about the mountain others didn’t: it’s where HGTV interior designer Jasmine Roth was married.

So instead of hiring a designer and then telling the story, they hired Jasmine. And, with that move, hired a designer who came with a) a great story, b) a team that could tell that story really well, and c) a ton of distribution and reach for that story once told (Jasmine has 700k followers, HGTV 5m, plus streaming viewership).

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Listen, I won’t pretend the know the logistics of how the arrangements of this kind of collaboration works, but I love that the Park City was able to connect these dots and unlock a deeper story from an upgrade that their team otherwise would have glossed over.

Should every lodge upgrade become a partnership with HGTV?

Probably not.

But I think the lesson here is to not assume that the story is only the improvement. Look for ways to go a little deeper, unlock more at the human level through people whose lives somehow connect to that part of your mountain, and try to generate a little bit more meaning for every upgrade, every improvement, and every story along the way.

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.