I’ve talked ad nauseum about how I believe we need to care much more than we do about how skiing looks.

Or, said another way, what a skier gets to see or experience or take a picture in front of during their day at the mountain. Beginner skiers, for example, are typically stuck in the flat-light shadows of a lodge which incredible vistas (and a ton of Instagram photos) could be theirs if each lesson also included a gondola ride to the top so they could experience what everyone else does.

In that thread I’ve seen precious few resorts try to create unique, fun visual angles to their mountain. But one I saw a few weeks ago has quickly gotten me to think differently about this question.

President’s Day
Let’s set the stage, shall we? It’s President’s Day weekend at Canaan Valley, but the weather is a little blah and the light is flat. What could give this weekend a bit of a visual, relevant boost?

Maybe something like this.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CLVC8EkjMQt/

The snow provides the white, a bit of environmentally-friendly coloring did the rest to make a red, white, and blue slope.

Consider How it Looks
If you aren’t blessed with incredible vistas or plentiful powder and blue skies, take some time during the off-season to consider how photo-worthy your mountain is.

We live in an age where people don’t just take a lot of photos, the photos are the reason many people do things.

Maybe that’s a snow sculpture, maybe that’s colored lights, maybe that’s a snow stamp, or maybe that’s dying your snow patriotic colors. Even if you ultimately decide no change is necessary, the conversation and thought experiment is one resorts need to revisit given where we are with culture and technology.

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.