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INDUSTRY EVENTS NORTHEAST WINTER SPORTS SUMMIT 2008 Right after the Labor Day Weekend, 663 industry folks got together at the magnificent Mount Washington Hotel for the Northeast Winter Snow Summit, put on by Ski Maine. For three days, 359 ski area attendees from 64 ski areas, cruised the trade show hall, which hosted 109 exhibiting companies or attended any of the 43 seminars.Following is a wrap-up of some of the sessions, as well as photos from the show. Carey Kish—Go Maine Commuter Program Carey Kish works within the Maine government developing a program for commuters to share rides to work. With sky-rocketing gas prices, people are revisiting the carpooling idea in droves. Mr. Kish is now taking aim at the leisure and recreation market. The system works much like an on-line dating service—a user can log on and punch in the following: “From the Boston area, looking to share a ride to Sunday River this weekend.” Then, the system tries to find a match. Users can specify a gender, smoking or non-smoking, etc. This trip planner has been in use in Maine, but is now set to debut in Vermont and New Hampshire before this season. The system is already funded, so there is no cost to resorts. For more information, check out www.rideproweb.com/demo. Keynote Speech with Chuck Steedman Chuck Steedman kicked things off with his 10/5 rule of customer service—make eye contact at 10 feet and greet at 5 feet. This was instituted by him at Fenway Park where he was in charge of the facility and customer relations. Management at Fenway had very low customer satisfaction so they created a war room to look at the "the path of the customer's experience". They audited every touch point of the guest’s experience from the parking lots (whether they owned it or not) to the mass transit. Then they set up regular "tell it to the Sox" meetings where they brought in their most verbal customers to talk with management about their grievances. They also employed secret shoppers. And, finally, they made it part of every staff person's job description to "retain customers." Needless to say, their efforts paid off as satisfaction rates began to rise. Next Trends in SEO: Universal Search, Usability and Analytics by Monica Wright When it comes to search engines, there are some general rules of thumb. During this informative session, many ideas were thrown out and we outline 10 of them here: 1) Tag your images or descriptive tags (don't let an image on your site carry a name like "DS234.jpeg," have it say "snowboarder on rail.jpeg." 2) Use flickr & other photo sharing sites such as digg, twitter, photobucket, linkedin, etc. Search engines love social sites. 3) If you don't have one--get a facebook media page. 4) Create video channels in youtube and google video. Use keywords when tagging. 5) Submit business listings to google’s local business center...it's free. 6) If you blog use full rss 7) If you sell products...submit them to google product feed. 8) Put your address in the footer of your web pages as they are good for geographic searches. 9) Get yourself on wikipedia 10) Remember that if your site is built around flash or javascript, they can't be seen by the search engines (unless you work with your programmers to come up with workarounds). Food Service Meets the Perfect Storm Yes, food prices are up, and consumers are feeling the pinch of a slow economy. But food service need not leave a bad taste this year, for resorts or consumers, if F & B operations are run wisely. Jon Rollins of Boston Culinary Group, which runs the food service of 14 resorts in the Northeast, laid out the challenge: rising food prices (up more than at any time in the past 27 years), due to diminishing farmlands, rising fuel prices, worldwide demand for food, labor pains, and ethanol, are squeezing retail margins. John Taylor of Cisco described how to combat the storm, primarily through better training and wise use of resources. He encouraged resorts to promote value, and related to that, to manage menus and costs. He recommended frequent menu changes, to keep menus full of popular items, and to focus less on margins (and food costs) and more on profits. How? Via half portions and miniaturization, and promoting high-profit items such as coffee, smoothies and non-alcoholic beverages. Plus old-fashioned ingenuity, such as offering a smaller-portioned version of popular evening dishes at lunch. He also focused on the importance of constantly training staff on both efficiency and customer service. Efficiency means saving pennies wherever possible: reducing errors, consolidating vendors, enforcing portion controls. And he reminded managers that doing all this will help achieve the customers’ overall goal: having fun. Cutting Costs Thru Creativity To show how easily areas can create value in F & B, a chef from Boston Culinary Group took a few simple ingredients—bread dough, cinnamon roll dough, cookie dough—and, by adding a few other common ingredients found in the kitchen, turned these into much higher-profit desserts and sandwiches. All the creations took little extra time or ingredients, but produced tasty, higher-profit items: Danish pastry, tarts, fancy breakfast sandwiches. The message: be creative with your ingredients. If you need help with that, ask for it! Suppliers are very willing to share their expertise and help you sell more to your customers, and to entice them to come back for more. Achieving Cost-Effective Snowmaking Jim Horton of Johnson Controls Snow was one of several snowmaking suppliers to describe efficiency measures. His particular focus: cooling the water used to make snow. Spray aerators are the least expensive means for those with snowmaking ponds; installation costs about $10,000. However, the process can take three weeks or more, depending on the volume of water, and the system must be shut down when air temps rise (lest the process start to reheat the water). Submerged bubbler cooling pipes are another method. For areas without ponds, evaporative cooling towers are the only real option, though expensive ($100,000 per tower). But with energy costs rising, water cooling can increase efficiency and cut energy costs. Other efficiency steps that save energy: tower-mount all guns; train all snowmakers to be as good as your best; repair older guns (including installation of new nozzles, often 30% more effective than worn-out nozzles); do pre-season maintenance well in advance of first use; color-code all valves; automate your primary trails to use more of the available snowmaking windows. Last but not least, always seek ways to close the gap between utilization and optimization. Choosing Accountability As part of a three-part management series, Nicole Voth (Mountain Performance Consulting) started by making managers aware of the need to be accountable for their own job and actions. She catalogued the many excuses people/managers employ (blaming others, failure to report on activities, accept the idea that the situation is “out of my control”) and described the “victim cycle” many people use to evade responsibility. To rise above the negativity and evasion, she said, accept responsibility to solve the problem. Feeling trapped? Ask questions about what, where, and how you can move forward. Figure out what parts of the problem are controllable and find ways you can have an impact. To help others, follow a set routine: listen, acknowledge, ask, coach, and commit to the solution. To help yourself, seek the wise counsel of your colleagues—they’ll gladly assist your effort to be more accountable. Trial and Retention: Looking Back and Looking Forward NSAA president Michael Berry reviewed the past season’s strengths and weaknesses. He pointed out that while visitation increases in the Northweat last year ranged from 17 percent (Vermont) to 29 percent (Connecticut and Rhode Island), the economic slowdown need not make this a one-time fluke: in past bear markets, area visits have been far better correlated with snowfall and snow cover. So: stay focused, be efficient, and provide great customer service, and visitors will come. The keys to focus on, pinpointed by the Net Promoter Score peak performers, is to reduce G & A expenses and gain more income from lessons, food and beverage, and rentals (the latter for smaller areas especially). Keep older folks and women happy and coming out, and keep the guest experience high. Don’t focus on EBITDA to the detriment of the customer, he warned. The biggest challenge? “Conversion is the single biggest issue facing the industry,” Berry said. We’ve made some progress, but we have to do better, he reminded resorts. That includes getting better information to customers before they visit, to reduce the effects of fear, confusion, ignorance, and the overwhelming impact of visiting a big, strange place for the first time. The importance of treating newcomers well means that both the rental shop and snowsports school need leaders who make sure the learning experience is epic, he concluded. Urban Skate Plazas Is it completely idiotic to consider putting an urban skate plaza in a mountain environment? Tom Noble of WhoSkates.com and Steve Doe of Sebago Technic don’t think so. They showed photos of dozens of urban parks and suggested how they would fit into a year-round usage plan at ski areas. The photos showed mostly permanent, cast-in-concrete plazas, not simple “plunkers” (temporary features). For instance, they demonstrated how a summer skate plaza can serve as a winter stairway entrance, outdoor seating plaza, home to the usual slopeside ski and board racks, or even as a beginner-level wintertime terrain park. Plazas can also be built in the space between tiers in the parking area. The rationale for all this: a relatively low-cost ($30,000 to $40,000) plaza can create a high usage facility for 10- to 16-year-olds. If you can keep these teens and tweens occupied, the theory goes, you can also attract their parents, younger and older siblings, and their friends. Plus, skaters create a visual spectacle: 75% of plaza visitors don’t skate, Noble said. They just show up to watch and be part of the scene. And finally, there’s great crossover between skaters and boarders. Providing year-round activities for core customers can convert them to longtime and loyal visitors in summer as well as winter. Judging by the reaction of the mostly-skater audience, skate plazas could be a hit.
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EVENTS WRAPUP 
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