When me and the fam spent 6 weeks in Vermont last year, we did so in the middle of a migration of city-dwellers to New England’s calming countryside.

Now, remember, Vermont had a done a lot of work over the previous years to lure folks to their state – include a cash incentive if you relocated – $10,000 to be exact – with less-than-impressive results.

Then, like the salmon of Capistrano, Covid sent them flocking.

On the Brain
What’s important to remember is that behind every 100 families who actually plug the plug on like in Boston or Brooklyn or the Bay Area, there are maybe 1,000s of families who are having similar thoughts but haven’t yet pulled the trigger.

In other words, if you want to get people to think about and talk about moving to your area, now is a great time to ask.

Which is exactly what ROOST – the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism in the Adirondack’s – did.

While the survey is now closed, the meat of the questions were focused on things like:

• What would be the biggest reasons you’d move to the area
• Likelihood of moving to the area
• What you would need to make it an appealing choice (wifi, arts, dining, etc.)
• Lots of demographic info (current location, income, etc.)

And with a really compelling giveaway of things that would actually align with the interests of the folks they’d want to hear from most – Adirondack chairs or a trip to the area – I thought it was a really smart, well-timed effort.

The wave of organic interest will fade, but ROOST now has priceless intel to generate their own demand going forward.

At the Least
If real estate is part of your resort’s equation, I think a campaign like this is worth a look.

At the least, an email like this to your entire database is going to give you a really accurate segment of real estate leads to use going forward. And, if this winter scares of any of those relocators, that could be handy when you want to replace some of the families that can’t hack it.

Either way, a lot of folks’ secret hopes are bubbling to the surface. A year from now, those dreams may be safely tucked away again. Now’s a great to figure out who is who before they do.

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.