“Continuing my trends of sharing simple, yet powerful marketing ideas on Tuesdays, I’ll draw from the talented folks at Park City Mountain Resort for this week’s installment.”

Unlike many of you, I didn’t grow up on the slopes with my family. We were not so well-to-do (aka poor), and I remember vividly how out of place I felt during my first day at Sundance Resort in Utah. Everyone seemed to know exactly what to do and where to go…except for me. Lacking fundage, we skied for free (thanks to a local radio station) on borrow skis (thanks to my aunt’s family), our only instructor being the skiers gracefully schussing by us and the school of hard knocks. With such a promising beginning, why it took so long for me to feel like a true “skier” baffles me to this day.

Perhaps it is this first-hand experience that helps me relate to, and appreciate, a simple marketing idea that Park City Mountain Resort put together. In fact, they even won a NSAA Marketing Award for it last year.

Heavy on the customer service, here’s how it works. Three days before a brand new skier arrives to participate in the StartNow program, they get an email with three basic pieces of information:

• Where you can park when you arrive.
• What you should wear when you come skiing.
• Exactly where to go to check-in

That’s it. Once first contact is made at the ski school office, they’re good to go but often it’s the getting there, and arriving prepared for a day of skiing, that can be tricky. This is exactly what Park City has worked to make as smooth as possible.

No more skiers showing up in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt in January only to leave mid-day and never return. No more skiers getting so flustered by the difficulties of parking and navigating the resort that they lose interest in skiing before they even start.

Why I Like It
Two reasons come to mind. First, it’s simple. They’re not trying to add to the skiing experience. Rather, they are removing all the distractions that prevent skiers from enjoying skiing for what it is. Second, it’s automated. Aside from the time required to write the copy and get it setup in the system, the emails are sent automatically. The results have been extremely impressive, with net promoter scores averaging around 95.

A simple, automated solution to a common problem. A winning combination in my book.

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.