This week and next I’ll be sharing the results from the ski resort social media marketing survey. I had originally planned to just do a couple posts, but man, there’s some really interesting stuff in here.

After Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter last week and YouTube yesterday, time to dig into the two names I didn’t ask as many questions about, but still wanted to take the collective pulse on; Snapchat and Pitnerest.

Snapchat – Status

Just 5.6% of resorts (3 out of 54 responses) said they used it regularly. Even more interesting, 44.4% of respondents said they’d tried it in the past and no longer use it and 37% they just never bothered trying in the first place. The purple wedge was a variation on “use it occasionally” so that can be lumped into that category.

Snapchat – Free Response
The question was “In a sentence, where’s your head at with SNAPCHAT right now?” which 36 people replied to. Here what they said:

Good for reaching the youngins, little ROI; glad my cousins forced me into early adoption but it’s a little overwhelming when you combine all the “story” platforms.

Snap chat seems to be a fun app for kids high school age and younger.

Instagram stories.

Nah.

IG Stories became more effective of Snapchat because of it’s pre-existing community.

Punk city with low buying power and zero attention span

Our audience isn’t there yet, when they catch up we’ll use it again.

Sinking ship, not worth the time

Not as relevant for business usage. Mostly for tabloid news. Instagram stories > SnapChat.

we’ve done sponsored snaps but need to do more

hard to see the value

Let others tell the story for us.

Hoping it was a fad because I will never understand how to use it professionally or personally.

I keep waiting for it to no longer be a thing. It has a great young audience but at this point it’s just another platform to add to the list of things we have to manage and we have decided to put resources in other areas.

Other than for news media, doesn’t seem useful for businesses.

Not worth the time unless we can have a team of 13-22 year olds posting daily, or be a media outlet ourselves.

We have always been concerned with authenticity with respect to Snap more than any other channel. We have opted to not play rather than play the fool. Snap is still there and we will be invested this season.

FB stories has made it skip able

Too old but I know the youngins use it constantly

Feels like it’s been over taken by Insta stories.

To hard to use to target lots of users

We would love to do it but it just adds one more thing to or plate, with FB and Insa stories we think we’ll be ok without it.

We haven’t found the time to devote to Snapchat yet, but are looking at it.

Fingers crossed that IG stories has killed it.

Not the right target market for the vast majority of our guests.

Would love to use Snapchat more but with limited manpower Snapchat is one that we haven’t forayed into–we would rather do it right then be on there for the sake of being on there.

You can accomplish the same thing with Instagram, brands on Snapchat are cringy.

Limited

We are currently focusing on continuing to build our Facebook and Instagram presence. Perhaps we will revisit Snapchat in the future.

Snapchat is so a couple years ago.

never used it, can’t maintain it so we’re not going to use it !

Instagram stories are 1. easier 2. likely going to take over Snapchat

After a small trial we decided not to invest energy there and keep the other one high

We’ve considered using this platform, but due to staffing and budgetary constraints I don’t see the value in the return.

It was really good in the beginning but with the changes and now the ‘score’ it is more hassle than it is worth.

SNAPCHAT is not safe

About what I expected, I think. A few people really into it, most people giving it a “meh” and lots of folks who have tried but didn’t find enough value to stick with it.

Pinterest – Status

Having monitored usage by resorts for a while now, the fact that not a single respondent said they use Pinterest regularly doesn’t come as a huge surprise. What did surprise me is that the group who “tried and no longer use” was actually smaller than the same group for Snapchat. Given the age of both, definitely makes Snapchat feel more like a fad and Pinterest more like a minor, but nevertheless valeable, player to keep around. The purple wedge was a free-response variation of “tried and no longer use it.”

Pinterest – Free Response
The question was “In a sentence, where’s your head at with PINTEREST right now?” which 35 people replied to. Here what they said:

Important – and a good venue – for promotion of our wedding business.

It literally is soul sucking garbage.

It’s a great spot for some of our best pictures.

Nah.

Pinterest is great for moms.

Nowhere

Can’t seem to figure out effectiveness

Rarely used. Update occasionally.

works for wedding planning

my mother in law loves it

Digital hoarding

We put some wedding stuff up occasionally, so haven’t totally written it off.

From the resort standpoint, I think it offers very little ROI and is time consuming to do properly.

Pinterest feels so spammy to me these days – most everything I can pin is a paid ad or listicle.

DIY, weddings and good recipes, for my personal use; not our platform to dominate.

Honestly not sure how we would leverage it to our advantage. As a group we are not familiar enough with the platform.

Meh. Barely use it

Whoever’s on Pinterest that’s not on FB, Insta or Snapchat probably isn’t our target.

Does not create ROI.

Didn’t see any tangible results for the resort when we used it.

We haven’t used it.

Hanging in there.

Meh.

Meh

Nothing

Pinterest is definitely more useful in our wedding business than the skiing.

It’s pretty, but other channels are more effective.

I don’t think it worked for our resort – cool resource to share old photos or throwbacks, but overall, not the right market currently.

The most under-utilized tool in my box. Sponsored pins are killing it right now.

We maybe put 3x 3 hours per year to keep some images on it. Not in our priorities

Get to people while they’re actively planning! We use to promote our weddings

Not a great fit for us – we’re more regional than destination oriented.

Weddings….

PINTEREST has joined the scammers

Similar mixed bag of “good for some people, not for others” and an overall “meh” (in fact, three people used that exact word to describe their thoughts). Honestly a bit surprised Pinterest is, as one response put it, “hangin’ around” but it absolutely is.

So, that’s the full recap of the individual sites. Tomorrow, we’ll dig into the overall picture and I’ll share some final thoughts alongside your thoughts looking at social media marketing as a whole.

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.