I can think of few things uglier than a YouTube player on a clean website design. Not that the player is, in itself, particularly hideous, it just never seems to fit. We’ve seen that player everywhere: on spammy “Work at Home” sites, on thousands of blogger blogs, on social media. Thousands spent on a rock-awesome new site only to use the same video player as the 65 year old Granny-blogger from Poughkeepsie. Until now, your options have been limited. Either use an expensive business video hosting site to handle your uploads and embeds, use the infamous YouTube system, or use the Vimeo player we all seem to love with the knowledge that you are breaking their TOS that forbids commercial use.

Last week, much to my delight, Vimeo finally introduced a PRO Business account [cue angels singing amid sounding trumpets].

With these accounts now on the market, here are six reasons you should start using Vimeo for all the videos you plan on embedding in your resort’s website.

1) The Player
I’ve already said this, but their player is really sharp. Minimal, monochrome, hover-activated controls and video that goes right to the edge are just the beginning. Add in custom thumbnails and it would be worth it to use Vimeo even if they didn’t have other features – but they do.

2) The Stats
Vimeo PRO accounts have always had awesome advanced stats and, as far as I can tell, the business stats are no different. Getting valuable details on how your videos are consumed doesn’t sound exciting until you find out what you’ve been missing.

3) The Branding
If you’ve got a video player showing YOUR videos on YOUR site, why does it have someone else’s logo on it? This doesn’t have to be the case. Vimeo lets you add a logo of your own and brand the player as if you were the anti-social programmer who spent his weekends locked in a pizza-filled basement writing the code.

4) The Quality
Vimeo is made for filmmakers, not teens with iPhones. This means that your videos look incredibly sharp, nearly identical to the way it looked when you first rendered it with your editor. When you watch HD on Vimeo, it really is HD.

5) The Extras
Here’s a list of additional features straight from the horse’s mouth (Vimeo’s blog post announcement), “Unlimited HD uploading, HD embedding (up to 1080p), priority uploading, and great mobile, tablet and TV support.” Not bad. Not bad at all.

6) The Price
Vimeo PRO Business accounts are $199/yr.
http://vimeo.com/pro

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.