Six thoughts on the state of social media platform usage by resorts.

Gregg Blanchard   /   Aug 5, 2021

These analyses are never yield game-changing insights, but I’ve always loved how they give us a nice, clean view of where we are as a group.

And this round was no exception. Three simple things stood out to me.

Multi-Platform Usage

This was really interesting to me because I didn’t notice this trend the other times I’ve dug into the data. Based on the stats I shared this week, ski resorts are posting from an average of 2.2 different social media platforms. The breakdown goes as follows:

• Using 1 Platform: 27%
• Using 2 Platforms: 38%
• Using 3 Platforms: 28%
• Using 4 Platforms: 5%
• Using 5 Platforms: 1%
• Using 6 Platforms: 0.5%

The Stack

If you do the match, 0.5% means one resort used six platforms for the 25-30 tweets I analyzed for them. That list went as follows:

That mix of autoposting from Instagram, native apps, and two social platforms is really interesting.

Big Players

It looks like Salesforce Social Studio appears to be something left over from the Peak Resorts days (only the former Peak Resorts seem to be using it) but Sprout Social is used across Vail Resorts.

I didn’t see much consistency across the Alterra mountains, however. This seems to suggest and support the more uniform marketing methods and messages of Vail Resorts and perhaps highlights which tweets are coming from Broomfield versus on site.

Native Twitter Apps

Looking across the group it was also interesting to see how many people were still using the native apps. On mobile, nearly 2/3 of resorts have been using the iPhone or Android apps recently and on the native web app you’re looking at even more than that.

I’m in the same boat. I’ve tried a handful of apps over the years, but with more features built right into the native experiences (like scheduling) I haven’t seen many reasons to pay for something more.

The Big Dogs

And perhaps more interesting is that this is true of resorts of all sizes, not just the smaller names. For example, all these names below used the native web app:

• Aspen Snowmass
• Big Sky
• Breckenridge
• Deer Valley
• Heavenly
• Loon
• Mammoth
• Park City
• Snowbasin
• Steamboat
• Stratton
• Sun Valley
• Vail
• Whistler

Pretty interesting.

Simple

And hopefully gives some marketers some food for thought when it comes to choosing their platforms. In some instances, yes, an app (especially on other social sites) can be absolutely huge.

But for most marketers?

Welp, it looks like most marketers are getting by with the free stuff.