Over and over again, the surveys show the same thing: cost of skiing and boarding is not a major hurdle. What a relief! All along, we had harbored that guilty feeling we were pricing ourselves out of the market. Now we know: It wasn’t those $70 lift tickets, it wasn’t those $650 dollar skis or those $60-an-hour private lessons; it wasn’t even those $6.50 hamburgers at the on-mountain restaurants that were the problem. No, it was “time starvation,” or some other such. Whatever.
Logic compels me to demur. When our research gurus try to find out whether cost is a barrier to growth of the sport, I wonder if they aren’t often asking people who have already announced it isn’t. And, bless us all, we have lots and lots of these nice people, spending up a storm at our resorts, competing with each other in the game of showing how little cost is a factor, lining up for the privilege of buying a time-share in our new development. (“Sorry, you’ll have to buy a ticket that will enter you in the sweepstakes that determine who has a chance to make a deposit.”) It makes your heart glow.
The very simple trouble with this picture—and you knew this was coming, didn’t you?—is that we are basing too many of our marketing assumptions on a flawed model where all our customers are rich. And that they’ll always be there for us. It’s a marketing strategy that works as long as it works, but fashion, like fire, is not something to play with. It can burn. Where I think the strategy has flaws is that, except in a few cases, the loyalty is not so much to a sport as it is to a lifestyle.
Now let’s look at skiers as they used to be created—and still are—at the feeder/breeder areas in New England, throughout the Midwest, in the Southeast and in the Northwest. They flock to the sport through kids’ programs, often bringing the moms and dads with them. There’s something quite different at work here. There’s no means test, there’s no glamour quotient to be weighed. Mostly there’s a whole lot of enthusiasm on everyone’s part—by the kids who get enticed and by the dedicated teachers and others at the hosting areas. It’s mostly about the sport itself. Here, skiing or boarding are not just amenities in an entertainment complex, designed to provide the public with as many ways as possible to spend their money. It is everything.
As our industry thinks about its long-term growth goals, it might be well to ponder the two skiing worlds we have and the growing disconnect between them. It was always there. Aspen and Wilmot Hills, Wisc., were “worlds apart” 25 years ago; they still are, but I sense the gap is infinitely larger—and growing. There used to be middle ground: big regional mountains that were all about skiing. There still are a few, but to survive, many are transforming themselves into copycat versions of rich lifestyle entertainment centers. Won’t this mean we will lose more and more of our most enthusiastic participants sooner than we ever did before? And by the image we are creating, are we not in danger of raising those cost barriers among our pool of potentials—barriers we all like to deny exist.
As I say, I think we need to think about these things.
