Business at Mt. LaCrosse used to be so poor on Sunday nights the area didn’t bother to open. Now Sunday is one of the busiest nights of the week and, although Super Bowl Sunday isn’t the biggest Sunday of the year, give him time, says Motschman.
Promotions have been working at ski areas and there are as many different ones as there are creative marketing directors and general managers. At Mt. LaCrosse, food proved to be a creative edge in the area’s midwinter promotions when group minimums were dropped, but added to the standard lift, lesson and rentals discount, and threw in a food coupon. “We targeted mainly church groups, youth groups, boy scouts, and girl scouts to build our night business,” Motschman said. “We tried to include a complete package, including food, such as hot dogs, that would appeal to kids.”
Kid promotions, learn-to-ski promotions, Super Bowl promotions, midweek and group promotions were some of the ways ski areas around the country tried to build and maintain business during the “in-between” month of January — in-between the big holiday months of December and February — well before the traditional end-of-the-season spring promos of March and April.
“We’re been focusing so long and heavy on getting new skiers into the sport, we decided to concentrate on the existing skiers,” said Eric Stiegemeier, director of skier services at Bogus Basin, Id. In January Bogus Basin kicked off a number of new and different promos aimed at everyone from skiers (discount Mondays). In between were a ladies group ski and a businessmen’s group ski (both on Wednesday). “The idea is to try and get more people to come up and ski midweek,” Stiegemeier said. “So far it seems to be working.”
Nashoba Valley, Mass. has sliced the midweek market even smaller. In January, it inaugurated a “six runs and a sandwich” promo aimed at the midweek lunch crowd. The $12 lift ticket is good from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. each weekday and includes a $5 lunch coupon. With the Boston metro lunch market minutes away, it seemed like a good idea. But Lynn Pincomb said response had been disappointing. “It hasn’t really gotten off the ground,” she said. “We’ll have to take a look at it at the end of the year to see if we’ll continue it next year.”
Wachusett, Mass., decided to try a McDonald’s approach for a midwinter promotion. Instead of aiming at Mom and Dad, the area decided to target the real decision makers — kids.
“We have 9,000 kids in our after-school program,” said David Crowley, marketing manager at Wachusett. “We sent each of these kids a piece of mail inviting them to bring their parents skiing. Many of the kids have never gotten mail before so it tends to get opened.”
Each mailing contains a lift ticket, lesson and rental coupon for Mom or Dad. Crowley said Wachusett tried the campaign four years ago and had such a good response it decided to dust it off again this year. “Hopefully, it will draw business in February and March,” Crowley said.
Corporate sponsor tie-ins are also popular and have a proven track record. Washington state teamed up with Jeep to run a program January 9 aimed at increasing midweek business. Five ski areas — Stevens, Crystal, Alpental, Mission Ridge and White Pass — participated in the promotion, which drew some 20,000 skiers, “about double our normal midweek business,” said Dave Moffett, chairman of the Pacific Northwest Ski Areas marketing committee. The event was so successful Moffett said Jeep and the state ski areas association are planning to repeat it in March. “We don’t do much midweek business out here and it’s hard to do promotions because we’re already so cheap midweek” Moffett said. “But this was a good one.”
Bear Mountain, Calif., teamed up with a bus company to kick off a highly successful promotion from Orange County and San Diego. “We initiated it last year on a temporary basis and it was so successful we expanded it this year,” said Cathy Gherardi, sales and marketing coordinator at Bear. The goal was not only to increase midweek business, but also to reduce traffic on the narrow mountain road leading up to the area and in Bear’s limited parking lots. The promo has worked on all fronts. “It’s not unusual to have 7 to 19 buses in our parking lot,” Gherardi said.
Live radio remotes were another popular January feature. Bear had a Long Beach station broadcasting live from its deck on Super Bowl Sunday. Wilmot ski area in Wisconsin started off a series of live radio broadcasts in January with a popular Chicago station. “We not only get our name mentioned all week on the radio promoting the broadcast, but the broadcast itself brings skiers,” said Mike Reese, president of Wilmot.
In exchange for giving a local Boston TV station its major media buy, Wachusett cut a deal to become the site of the station’s primary midwinter promotion. About 15 on-air personalities spent the day at Wachusett as part of a special family day promo between the ski area and the television station.
“There is a level of credibility lacking in advertising,” Crowley said. “But when people see the TV anchors they trust saying, ‘We’re going to be at Wachusett this weekend, come join us,” that gives us more credibility and ties us tighter to the Boston market.”
Creating ties, visibility and market share. There seem to be as many ways to do it in the middle of the winter as there are ski areas.
