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INDUSTRY EVENTS NORTHEAST WINTER SPORTS SUMMIT Nearly 400 resort attendees representing more than 60 areas gathered for the 16th annual Northeast Winter Sports Summit at Bretton Woods, N.H., Sept. 5-6. Safety issues dominated the presentations even more than ever, with marketing a close second. Rental issues were also high on the agenda, in part due to the rapid expansion of the Ski Area Rental Assn. buying program. “It’s the right content for a wide variety of resort personnel,” organizer Greg Sweetser of Ski Maine told SAM.There were 120 supplier companies in attendance, showing off their wares during trade show hours. And surrounding trade show hours were some great educational opportunities with 37 sessions, with a total of 55 speakers. With the jury award in the Salvini case hanging over the risk management scene, several sessions included in the NSAA Fall Workshop addressed terrain park design, maintenance, and risk management. But that was far from the only topic of interest. Here’s an overview of what went on in some of the sessions: Claims and Litigation Trends This session focused on terrain park incidents and pinpointed problem areas. The take-home from the statistics: 1. Resorts need a strategic plan for their parks. Know what you’re providing, and when the worst happens, include park staff in the accident investigation. 2. Pre- and post-loss documentation and communications are key. Maintain diagrams of the park throughout the season. Wide communication is essential--let all departments know what is going on. On the local front, attorney Evan Hansen noted that Maine’s new ski statute broadened the definition of “skiing” and “skier” to include all snowsliders, including tubers. And “area” now includes tubing areas, even tubing-only areas. The statute also covers a wide range of activities, including racing, skier and boarder cross, and all types of competitions. N.H. attorney Thomas Quarles noted that the state’s revised statute, adopted in 2005, has already reduced claims. But he warned that parks and tubing areas must be properly signed, and as a practical matter, set off from the main slopes in some manner. Quarles also noted that, when resorts change owners, liability releases should be updated with the names of the new owners. In addition, old records must be maintained. Electronic records are acceptable, even liability releases obtained over the Internet—but they must include the signees’ check-through acknowledgement. Attorney Tom Aicher addressed trends in litigation. He echoed Quarles’ observation about updating documents, and added another twist to the new-ownership story: to prepare to defend future cases, update all your documents, and destroy the old forms. If the corporate structure has changed, your loss record can be “reset” to start with the date of your ownership. In short, you can free yourself from the loss record of the previous owners. Slip and fall accidents remain under-represented in documentation, over-represented in claims. The solution: do good accident investigation with slip and fall accidents. Don’t treat them lightly. Case Study of a Runaway Jury Verdict The $14 million jury award in the Salvini case has heightened attention on risk management. A review of how areas have prevailed in other high-stakes cases revealed a common thread: the decisions and actions of mountain operations were consistent with all levels of management procedure. In one incident at Loon, N.H., the area took steps immediately after a fatal accident to determine that it was a freak incident and not due to the design, construction, or maintenance of the feature. The area demonstrated that the jump was as safe as possible, and this bolstered the defense. Booth Creek vice president of risk management Mark Petrozzi reviewed the Salvini case. Among the lessons learned: • carefully document design, construction, and maintenance programs, including all visual inspections and testing done on the park. • make sure warning and educational signs meet the ANSI standard • document the training of the staff and their expertise and experience. • analyze accidents that occur and learn from them. • be able to explain the entire process and how changes are implemented. • document the reopening of features after an accident. • develop good inter-departmental communication on all of the above. While there were several small failures in the above list that contributed to the Salvini verdict, breakdowns in Snoqualmie’s inter-departmental communication caused the greatest problems for defending the case. It’s important for management, park, patrol, ops, marketing, and grooming all to know about serious incidents and to coordinate their response—and understand their roles in the accident investigation. Terrain Parks – The Shape of things to come The upcoming revision of the NSAA guidelines on terrain park guidelines and management policies will be published, if all goes according to plan, prior to the 2007-08 season. For the moment, we can tell you that expected additions include employee training templates; expanded user education efforts via an enhanced SmartStyle program; and possibly, guidelines regarding the use of science and engineering in the design and construction of features. A small group of engineers and case experts are working to develop guidelines for takeoff and landing zone measurements. At the same time, NSAA recognizes that park design will continue to involve art as well—due to such things as changing snow conditions, park design can not be reduced to numbers and formulas. The guide will not attempt to implement exact standards, and acknowledges that ultimately, usage depends on the rider. The guide also points out the need for resorts to dedicate terrain to a park, hire and train park staff, provide sufficient snow, allocate grooming and maintenance resources to the park, and educate customers on proper park use. Chris Gunnarson of Booth Creek and Jimmy Lawrence of MountgainGuard insurance reminded managers of the need to create a safety culture and to develop the communication process to achieve it. A key element of this is making sure that managers across all departments understand the strategic plan for the park. But much of the responsibility for safety comes back to the park staff. While the need for staff training is obvious, staff may also need to train so that they can prove their expertise to a jury, if necessary. Not only must a groomer understand park design and construction, he or she should be able to appear on the witness stand and speak intelligently about grooming terminology and defend the resort’s grooming tactics and operations of their park. Daily operations are another area of focus. Terrain park practices should include proper opening and closing protocols—including how to test features and inspect overnight grooming, not just dropping the rope. Staff should monitor the park throughout the day and perform maintenance as necessary. The guidelines will also cover park staff interaction with guests, and may include templates to help resorts train their staff in a formalized way. The resource guide will include a comprehensive approach to post-incident accident investigation, to help ensure that resorts collect the type of information necessary. Customer education will also receive attention, since user conduct ultimately determines how safe a feature is. The goal of education is to create success for all riders and fostering a strong sense of individual responsibility. Freestyle Terrain: Reducing Liability Through Design, Construction and Maintenance Yes, risk management in the terrain park begins at conception. Ryan Neptune of The Planet Corporation reviewed the park development process from initial concepts to daily maintenance. Design considerations include evaluating the natural terrain (pitch, width, intersection, flow, snow making), laying out features to control traffic and to create good spacing, and selecting appropriate features and dimensions for the audience. The construction process starts at the top—design should flow from the top down. Then, work within the limits of your terrain and equipment. Last but not least, only build what you can afford—on all levels, from finance to operator time and pay for park staff. The park may be the biggest liability exposure at the resort, so it needs the most attention, best equipment, most financial backing, and best operators and groomers. Maintenance is the final piece to consider. It’s important to have the manpower and expertise required to maintain the park. That includes allowing time for the crew to ride the park during the day to periodically test the features. Maintenance happens periodically throughout the day, and must take into account changes in weather and conditions. As with lift operations throughout the day, park staff should be on hand to rake, monitor, help guests, etc., all day. Diversity and Skier Development WinterKids developer Carla Marcus showed resorts how to encourage greater diversity on the slopes by implementing Snow School. The aim is to bring classrooms from local schools or even from outside local regions to the mountains. Snow School combines experiential, outdoor lessons on science and environment with skiing and snowboarding. To be successful, resorts have to go into the schools and convince administrators of the value of getting kids and teachers out of the classroom and into a different learning environment. Often, the schools can afford to bus the kids out as part of their academic curriculum. Do these educational programs help drive longterm visits? Sugarloaf received some encouraging data after it played host to local schools. It found that 46 percent of customers from the Winterkids program were either new or lapsed snowsliders. And nearly three-quarters of the parents believed that the mix of education and skiing/riding made a big difference for their children—from both an educational and health standpoint. Insights into Marketing Effectiveness In an increasingly fragmented media marketplace, how do you reach your intended audience? It has become very difficult to move the marketplace with advertising. In fact, James Chung of Reach Advisors told his audience, there are cases in which traditional advertising might not move the market at all. The point is, marketing is not about the media budget anymore. It’s about maximizing every touchpoint with the consumer. It is much easier, Chung noted, to move the market by managing those consumer touchpoints, especially the “bookend experiences”—the customer’s first and last contact with the resort, the arrival and departure experiences. Electronic communications, especially email, blogs, and websites, also provide points of contact that can drive business. Text messaging and video are tools that overall are less impactful at the moment, but can reach certain niches in the market well. Hard to believe, but there was a time not too long ago when one-to-one marketing seemed like a far-fetched idea. What’s New in Gear for Evac and Rescue Applications This session was more a review and sharing of ideas about how areas equip themselves and prepare for evacuation and rescue operations than a true review of what’s new. Led by moderator Peter Koch, a patroller at Black Mountain and Sunday River and a member of the Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Co., participants discussed the use of slings, ladders, and other tools. The importance of shock absorption in the fall protection/belay system and the benefits of wearing a full body harness held everyone’s attention. One of the newer tools for self-belay is the I’D by Petzl, a very beefy auto belay device. Proper handling and storage of ropes was a major focus. Since ice can break down rope, it’s important to dry it in a clean environment. The preferred storage technique is to flake the rope into a dry bin; hanging it can cause the rope to take a set at the high point. It can also take a set if it’s coiled in a bag. More than one area recommended reversing the rope and/or recoiling once a year to help avoid wear or set points. To check for rope damage, run the rope through your hands before and after each use. If defects are found, the rope should be retired. Even with good care, environmental factors frequently break down a rope after seven or eight years. For that reason, many manufacturers recommend replacement after 5 years. How to Plan, Build, and Promote a Business Blog Rick Brooks of flyte new media laid out the software tools and practical steps needed to create an effective business blog. Just as important, he described why anyone should bother: blogs look very much like websites, but they allow almost anyone to publish on the Web without knowing HTML, they website authoring language. So blogs are easy to create, and even easier to update. Blogs have a very broad reach. Every blog has three faces--that is, you publish the blog once, and it appears as a website, a news feed, and an email feed. Since blogs can reach people and connect with search engines easily, they can funnel appropriate visitors to your full-on website from all three faces. Brooks also cited the many ways to create “link love,” the connections with other, like-minded or related sites that can feed readers (read: potential customers) to your blog. What to blog about? Almost anything but your brochure or promotional copy. Things like: snow conditions, staff profiles, special events, Top 10 lists (things to avoid, most common mistakes, best bargains, off-mountain activities and reviews,etc.). Blogs are well suited to pushing info to readers that they want to have, not just (or even particularly) what you want them to have. You can get ideas for your blog from other blogs, the news, Google alerts on specific subjects, and of course, your own experiences. A good post has a compelling, keyword-rich title, a narrow focus. Brevity is a plus. Expect—in fact, encourage and embrace—the full range of comments to your posts. A blog is an ongoing conversation, warts and all. By dealing with negative comments, you can turn them into positives. Going Green: F operations A resort’s restaurants can contribute to environmental operations in a variety of ways, as Jon Rollins of Boston Culinary pointed out. Energy and water conservation, pollution prevention, recycling, and composting are all parts of a green program. To help F&B operations determine how to become more green, the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) maintains a large database of environmental resources for F&B operations. The database can help bridge the gap between the desire to change and become more green and the lack of information that prevents progress in that direction. GRA will come in to perform an environmental analysis of a resort’s F&B operations and consult with the resort on feasible, immediate ways it can alter its operations for energy efficiency and green operation. GRA can also provide models for centralized purchasing that will lower costs and confusion. So what tangible steps can a restaurant take? Switching to non-toxic cleaning products is one; some insurance companies give discounts to those who use them. Using green power, which can be as simple as installing a few solar panels, is another. Adopting green building materials, such as carpet, paint, and wood paneling, is a third. Using the Ski Area Rental and Accessories Buying Program Effectively The Ski Area Rental and Accessories (SARA) program has quickly expanded from 100 or so Midwestern areas to nearly 300 areas across the U.S. The reason for the rapid growth: SARA has created a buying program that delivers the economies of scale and value that large corporations like Vail Resorts enjoy to small- and medium-sized areas. The group buying program developed by SARA includes resorts as diverse as The Midwest and Idaho Ski Areas Associations to individual resorts. Developed to create a level playing field when it came to the pricing of rental hardgoods for small resorts, SARA has expanded into accessories; Smith, the Ketchum, Ida., manufacturer of goggles, ski poles and sun glasses, has become one of SARA’s biggest clients. With the majority of hardgoods manufacturers participating in the program, there’s a wide choice of rental product to choose from. Ordering and pricing is efficient and based upon a web platform, sarabp.com. And the group runs on-snow durability testing to weed out product that doesn’t stand up to the demands of rental equipment. In the past, the test program has been instrumental in helping manufacturers develop more durable rental gear.
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EVENTS WRAPUP 
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