Each of the authors of this article has been honored with a SAMMY Future Leadership award. It is to them that we turned for predictions as we enter the new millennium. While the predictions and philosophies may differ, their passion for this industry is undeniable. It will be exciting to watch this group take us into 2000 and beyond. The write-ups are in the order in which we received them. —Ed.
David Barry
COO, Copper Mountain
“He who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, his eyes are closed” —Albert Einstein
How can we not stand “rapt in awe” as we head into the new millennium? What a wild and crazy time we live in. Every day we become more and more capable of doing just about anything we want. And the more our options and capabilities increase, the more difficult it becomes to decide what is worth doing. Bigger pipes, faster lifts, top-to-bottom terrain parks, clothes that breathe, virtual trail maps, helmet cams, more comfortable boots—all of these are possible, even probable, within the next few years. Which of them will make or break the future of the snowsports industry? Or is it something else altogether?
Skiing is—always has been and always will be—an adventure in lifestyle. The experiences we have, the people we have them with and the memories we create—on the slopes, in the trees, in the lodges, restaurants and bars, standing rapt in awe at the top of the world—these are the suns around which the universe of snowsports revolves. And, as we head into the 21st century, we are reminded once again that the more things change the more they stay the same.
They tell me that the universe is expanding. But to me it seems like it gets smaller everyday. The Hubble telescope beams back pictures from hundreds of millions of light years away. The Concord zips across the Atlantic in less than four hours. E-mail arrives in Hawaii six hours before it was sent from Smithville, Indiana. And, my friends and I play host to nearly a million visitors per year, all of whom we come to know better and better every day. Our customers are no longer customers—they are guests, our guests. And, as with any guest, our opportunity to treat them to the experience they want is contingent on our knowledge of and relationship with them.
Technology, terrain augmentations, hard and soft goods improvements will all serve to enhance the snow-riding experience. We will all benefit from these developments. But the winners will be the ones who:
- Communicate with their guests on a personal level.
- Treat their guests to a personal, backstage pass, mountain experience.
- Create and maintain a familial, caring, be-there staff.
- Operate as a business while projecting, living and sharing a lifestyle.
- Understand that the product is the experience and the memories it creates.
The future is staring us squarely in the eyes. Hopefully we will be willing to stand rapt in awe, to keep our eyes open, to keep our ears open, to listen to, learn from and communicate with our guests. The competition for their time and attention will be fierce. The echo-boom generation has never known anything other than the computer age. And, as that age continues to mature, as we all move toward less and less human-touch in our work-a-day worlds, the need for human-touch becomes more and more prevalent. We must fill that need. We are, in the final analysis, in the people business. And it is we, the people, who will make or break the future. The future of skiing is us, each of us, all of us, each and every employee we bring into the family and each and every guest we serve.
Tom Fortune
General Manager, Schweitzer Mountain, Idaho
Three important components in the future of the winter sports industry and year round resorts are technology, marketing strategies and human capital.
Technology—The Internet will play the most significant role in our future. People will expect information immediately and will base their decisions on where and when they will hit the slopes or go on vacation based on this timely and detailed information. Virtual reality experiences for those who need a “slope fix” without coming to the mountain will be available and could become competition for our industry. On the other hand, those resorts that jump on this technology may be able to sell virtual runs at their areas or have potential guests check out the terrain by virtually experiencing it from home. The majority of revenue generated will be via e-commerce. Resorts that have the best and most user-friendly Websites will be at an advantage. Modern conveyances, snowmaking and state-of-the-art grooming equipment will be the expectation. Resorts that embrace change and get involved early with new and refined play equipment, direct to lift access systems or anything that reduces the hassle factor for guests will be popular.
Marketing and Guest Amenities—We need to come up with an industry-wide term for the activities that we provide. Using the words “ski” or “skiing” by themselves to describe what we do will become even more awkward than it is now. Destination resorts, as well as day areas, will need to have multiple activities available for a cross section of guests. People will want more options instantly available to take advantage of a continuing shortage of leisure time in the future. Resorts that have cell phone service, e-mail and Internet access available for their guests will attract people who need to stay connected and will help increase midweek visits. Partnerships for travel, goods and services, etc. and innovative ways to leverage them will create a competitive environment within our industry. In order to grow visits, resorts will need to focus on local markets as well as destination visits. The challenge will be figuring out the balance between frequent-skier incentives and discounted season pass promotions while maintaining high yields on daily ticket sales. Offering activities year round will become more prevalent in the future and becoming travel agents could be a way of staying connected to our guests and monitoring their spending and leisure habits. High-energy and extreme sports will become even more popular, pro-active slope etiquette, attitude and risk education, as well as more open minded policies will need to be adopted as a result.
Human Capital—Staffing will be another important element of success in the ever-increasing competitive job market. Organizations that have a mission, vision and values and nurture this into their culture will be looked up to by staff, prospective staff and potential strategic partners. The economic and competitive environment will require more thought-out planning than in the past. Resorts that create innovative, progressive staff recruiting, housing, training and retention programs will attract and keep the best employees. Resorts will also have to be committed to creating a fun, lively and secure environment for staff. Guests will want to be surrounded by energized, enthusiastic people and won’t have patience for mediocrity when time is so valuable.
Karl Kapuscinski
VP, General Manager, Mountain High, California
I believe there are exciting times ahead for all of us associated with the snow sports industry if we can just let go of the past and focus on the future.
Many of us in this business are waiting for the good old days to return. We talk about how we need to re-energize the so-called lapsed skier and appeal more to the baby boomers; somehow thinking all of a sudden this group is going to wake up and fall back in love with our sport. Guess what. . . It’s not going to happen. They, for the most part, have moved on and for those of us who have not realized it, now is the time for us to move on and start developing a new core base of snow players. There is a large group of people who are culturally diverse and economically stable, who have the time to enjoy our winter playlands if only we would introduce them to it. Instead we beat each other up pursuing the same small group of people we have been courting for the past 30 years.
After we nearly risk-managed skiing to death, we received a second chance with snowboarding. Lucky for us, the snowboarders of the early days were not that concerned with guest service, because the way we treated them surely would not be an example you would use in your guest service training sessions. My point is, here is a group of people (let’s stop calling them young) that despite being unwelcome at first, have continued to return to the point that they now make up anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of our business depending upon the resort. The lesson I see here is we should concentrate on developing snow sports that people want and have a passion for, instead of focusing on the glory days when skiers were plentiful.
Right now there are more people and more disposable income than ever. There is no reason we have to operate in a flat market other than the fact we are the ones who are flat by not understanding what our current potential market wants. Let’s stop looking to the past and concentrate on the future, understanding that it can be bright. Have fun!
Stacy Gardner
Director of Communications, NSAA
During the past 25 years, we have all witnessed tremendous changes in the ski industry, from detachable quads and advanced snowmaking systems to snowboards and shaped skis. The total slope experience has become more exciting and dynamic than industry pioneers could have possibly imagined. As director of communications for the National Ski Areas Association, here’s what I think is on tap as we turn the chapter into the next century:
During the first quarter of the 21st century, I forecast that ski areas will experience a renaissance similar to the one they experienced in the mid to late ’70s. The millions of dollars being invested today in remodeling and building new infrastructures like children’s centers, on-slope restaurants, state-of-the-art snowmaking and new lifts, will pay off as ski areas will be better prepared to accommodate guests, particularly the energetic 72 million echo boomers (ages 5 to 22), who will be enjoying their twenties during the next 15 years—and this age group makes up a large percentage of a ski area’s customer base.
One can expect a mountain real estate rush as many baby boomers will use their nest eggs to buy second homes, if not relocate altogether to mountain resort communities. Americans are wealthier today than ever before. The percentage of households that earn $100,000 or more has more than tripled between 1967 and 1997 and, coupled with the increase in home values and the stock market nationwide, baby boomers (ages 36 to 53) and generation x-ers (ages 23 to 35) will be positioned to take advantage of mountain resort communities’ family-friendly and culturally-rich lifestyle.
As mountain real estate goes up, lift ticket prices will come down. One can anticipate ski areas will continue to broaden the resort experience and offer more year-round amenities. Ski areas, small, medium and large, will offer customers discounted season passes, enhancing value and making them feel like VIPs. I predict that many ski areas will also establish a single-price adult lift ticket, whether purchased at the ticket window or in advance, yet manage yield because ski areas will be able to reduce expenses for brochure and other collateral printing, advertising, postage, etc., as a result of e-commerce on the Internet.
The Internet will be our best friend and worst enemy. When snow conditions are great, it will be the Internet that really drives business. Consumers will be afforded a wait-and-see luxury and take advantage of lodging package fire sales. This will be a normal part of booking a ski weekend getaway as E-fares have become business as usual for the airlines.
Our guests will be skiing longer. With medical technology advances re-engineering the human body with new knees, hips, vision and even organs, the over-the-hill-gang ski club will experience a record membership. In 2030, the average age of Americans will be 55 years (in 1970, it was 35 years) and there will be more seniors than teenagers, according to the U.S. Census. It’s hard to believe in the next 15 years, baby boomers will start joining the ranks of America’s elderly. Equally interesting is that by 2030, the non-Hispanic white population will make up less than half of the U.S. population under age 18.
We can also anticipate that the dry ski slopes, indoor ski and snowboard parks that are now becoming popular in England, the Netherlands and Japan, will surface in U.S. cities nationwide. By bringing these simulated slopes to urbanites, they’ll learn to ski and snowboard in unprecedented record numbers, even if they live in the Sunbelt.
Lastly, I foresee that Jack Turner’s “Snow Monsters” will debut into a motion picture and will become an international box office hit. A weekly children’s television show will follow and its popularity will exceed Pokémon. You’ll see the entire Snow Monster cast in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which will become the new national kickoff for the U.S. ski season!
Rory Strunk
Head Honcho, Resort Sports Network (RSN)
I would like to send a bumpersticker to every marketing director with the message “Feed the Passion, Capture Community, Enable the Transaction.”
This is one perspective on the convergence of media and transactional technologies that should be the mountain resort industry’s mantra as we turn the corner into the new millennium. This represents the ability to know your customer intimately, communicate with your customer constantly and to provide that customer instant gratification by bringing the cash register to their finger tips. We need an integrated e-commerce platform for everything the resort sells, delivered to the customer via Web e-commerce, resort commerce TV, metro commerce TV, digital phones, palm pilots, kiosks and every potential personal communication tool imaginable.
What the digital age has given us is the ability to send vast amounts of information to more people than we ever dreamed possible simply by pushing the send button. The next generation of the digital/Web age has shifted from this form of electronic brochure distribution to customer acquisition. This is the “show-me-the-money-stage” and if you did not get serious about the first Web wave, you should get very serious about the second wave.
As an industry, we tend to wait until the big waves break on shore and then, one-by-one, companies put their toe in the water. One example of this is the golf industry’s aggressive on-line shopping approach compared to the snow sports hard goods and soft goods minimal e-commerce presence. Fortunately, the resorts have less vendor/retailer issues to tackle and as a result have been much more aggressive. We see it and feel it at RSN, and the time to act is now. Do not wait for the customer acquisition wave to come to you: Go get it and ride it for all it’s worth. The resources required to create an integrated real-time e-commerce engine presents a daunting and costly proposition. If done right, however, it will become an industry standard platform. To do this, the cost and the competitive demand for speed and agility will necessitate a partnership approach that should include the resorts, independent resort area retailers/vendors, SIA, NSAA, resort developers, media companies, computer and software companies.
Generally, I’m wary of large industry initiatives as I have yet to see one that had any long-term staying power. To bring the big “E” to our sport does not mean that boards and committees have to meet endlessly. The private sector can present numerous alternatives to move the process forward. The challenge to the leadership of this industry is to take it seriously and make a commitment to work towards an industry standard platform that will elevate the mountain sports industry beyond other competitive markets.
Remember, “Feed the Passion, Capture Community, Enable the Transaction.” Happy New Year.
Guy Desrosiers
General Manager, Mont-Sainte-Anne/Stoneham, Que.
Our industry is facing several new challenges with the arrival of the new Millennium and it will be a prosperous one if we concentrate on promoting the pleasures of sliding on snow. We have finally accepted the fact that we are in competition with other recreation sectors and not with ourselves. That is why we must convey the one thing that is uniquely ours—winter in the mountains. We need to focus less on new technologies of our lifts or our grooming and concentrate on the simple and wonderful pleasures the mountains can offer.
Over the past few years, we have been caught in a vicious circle in our communications with the media and with our customers. We have lured the journalists, and sometimes the skiers, with tales of our latest and greatest investments when we know that the appeal of sliding on snow is based more on emotion. Winter sports enthusiasts want to go back to nature, to feel the freedom and to smell the wind. Journalists don’t ask golf courses each season what is new on the course. The golfers don’t either. They come back year after year because they love the game. Additionally, Nike has shown us that we should be selling a way of life, a culture, not a product. We have one of the best ways of life and we should capitalize on that.
If we can succeed in getting more of the industry to embrace this notion of simple pleasures, we can do away with all of our elaborate strategies for various age groups, including rock concerts, etc. Then we only need to emphasize what is our greatest resource—a way of life that can be healthy and exciting all at the same time.
It is also with this simple philosophy that we can recruit employees. We could set up communities where everybody is there because of their love of the mountains and their desire to discover them. It’s a simple philosophy that would allow Baby Boomers, Echo Boomers, X-ers and whatever other generation you can come up with, to work together and share a common passion. Instead of hiring based on technical knowledge, we could hire first those that love our way of life. The technology aspect of the job can be learned; to love the mountains is something that comes from within and the best technician in the world, if he doesn’t love the mountains, is not going to be the best employee.
The coming millennium is sure to be complicated with the dawn of the Internet era. It is for that reason that I just wanted to remind ourselves of why we’re here. Happy New Year to all.
