Sure I’ve lived in Utah for nearly 25 years, sure I learned to shred on the slopes of Sundance and Brighton, so what if my license plate proudly says “Greatest Snow on Earth,” I’m positive I can leave any bias baggage at the door when I say that Ski Utah has put together some mighty fine marketing with their latest release: the Yeti Pass. In a sort of venn-diagram style, the pass combines three powerful elements:

1. Parents
2. Discounts
3. Contests

In short, the Yeti Pass gives the holder a day of skiing at each of Utah’s 14 resorts for $499. Here’s the 411 on how these three elements combine to make some serious marketing sense.

Parents
Ski Utah already offers a 5th and 6th Grade Passport that “provides three days of skiing or snowboarding at each Utah resort.” The pass in itself is genius, because few are the parents who will let their kids ski unattended. And what kid wants to let 42 free passes go to waste.   We hate to admit it, but a nagging child holds much power.  With thousands of kids signing up, Ski Utah now has given parents an affordable way to accompany their budding Olympians to some of the more far flung destinations, perhaps sparking some additional lodging reservations and pass sales for other days in case they decide to make a weekend of it.

Discounts
Skiing on the Yeti Pass comes out to $35.64 a day. If you were to ski every resort in the state separately, you’d spend more than double that. Not even waiting for Groupon deals could give you such a bargain. Interestingly enough, skiers like deals. Shocking, I know.

Contests
Here’s how it works, “The first pass holder to successfully ski all 14 Utah resorts will be awarded an unforgettable heli-ski day with Wasatch Powderbird Guides.” But that’s just the beginning, “To participate, pass holders must take a photo of themselves at each resort ticket window with their lift ticket and Yeti Pass booklet and post it on the Ski Utah Yeti Facebook fan page.” Pretty smart move. I’d love to see the Facebook insights for the Ski Utah fan page this November and December. With parents and kids both able to ski on the cheap across the beehive state, I’d suspect a father-son pairing will be in the running for this award (depending on the attendance policy at the child’s school of course and/or homeschooling status).

I’ll have to learn more about how the individual resorts benefit directly from the $499 price tag, but from my perspective, it looks like a smart companion to the 5th and 6th Grade Passports.

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.