Ahhh, yes, it’s time to recap my predictions and see how well I foresaw marketing trends within the resort industry.

In years past, I’ve done anywhere from pretty well (2014) to okay (2013). This year, however, I…errr…didn’t exactly nail any one of them.

So instead of saying whether I’m right on wrong on each, I’ll simply rate my level of wrongness.

#1) The First, Big Affiliate Push by a Ski Resort
Level of Wrongness: 3/10
Did the big, public push in the affiliate arena happen? No. But, and I won’t get more specific, there have been a couple resorts that have started to apply nearly every other part of an affiliate program (without opening it up to the public) to their marketing.

They’re only working with their own skiers and a lot of the pieces are there, but a full-on affiliate effort? Not yet.

#2) The First Major Resort Will Delete Their Facebook Page
Level of Wrongness: 9/10
This actually happened, but maybe you didn’t catch it because it didn’t happen in the way I predicted. I’m speaking of Park City + Canyons merging their two Facebook pages. So is there a Canyons page? No. Did they delete it? No.

I knew this was a pretty far-out. I knew it would take a really rare combination of risk and support to do it, but it didn’t happen. Will it ever? Probably not. Based on current trend, I see pages going dormant for years long before they’re ever deleted.

#3) Facebook Groups Will Find Their Place in Skiing
Level of Wrongness: 10/10
At the beginning of 2015 I felt like groups were prime for innovation – especially for a brand looking to shed their Facebook page – and I feel the opportunity has grown even more now.

But not a single resort (as far as I know) has created a Facebook group and run with it. I’m tempted to put this in my 2016 predictions but I’ll just leave this here because the resort that nails groups is going to make their page nearly obsolete.

A Quick Word of Justification
Here’s the thing on all three of those: all the pieces are still in place for each to happen.

If a resort goes all in on groups, they’ll could easily delete their page. If reach continues to approach zero and a ski area can’t justify boosting posts, there will still be PR value locked in that page despite the lack of marketing value. And if one of those resorts testing an affiliate lookalike sees positive signs, they are one tweak away from fulfilling my prophecy.

And therein lies the challenge: identifying not just the trends that could blossom but the soil in which they can. If both pieces don’t come together, it’s all talk.

2016 Predictions Coming Next Week
But, fearless as ever, I’ll be back next week with another round of prognostications to consider.

Even with many of the “new” technologies – the ones that led to all those outliers and big innovations and experiments – starting to mature, I’m seeing some things that could really, really get interesting in 2016.

See you then.

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.