Consider: Two ‘never evers’ who took lessons as part of the January promotion three years ago at Loon, N.H., are now full-time ski and snowboard instructors.

At Park City, 13 percent of the 3,000 never-evers who participated in last year’s January lesson promotion didn’t just stick with skiing and riding—they bought season passes this year.

Three years after its launch, Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month (LSSM) is reaching critical mass. “Last year we introduced an estimated 30,000 to the sport,” says Raelene Davis, marketing director at Ski Utah and founder of the national LSSM promotion. “I think we’ll double that this year. Resorts are going crazy with what they are offering. They’re really getting into the spirit.”


Growing Numbers
All across the country, the feedback was positive. Lessons were up across the board at Utah resorts in January. Ditto for Colorado.

In New England, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont all offered free lesson packages the first week of January, and “sold them out in a heart beat,” says Greg Sweetser, executive director at Ski Maine. In New Hampshire, 4,025 people downloaded the free lesson package, compared to 2,684 last year.

“Not all of them will actually take a lesson,” notes Karl Stone, marketing director at Ski New Hampshire. “Last year about half did.”

Vermont, which included cross country centers in its free lesson package promo, saw a 200 percent increase over last year. “We’re thrilled with the response,” says Kathy Murphy, marketing director at the Vermont Ski Areas Association.

Individual resorts kept the momentum going the rest of the month with special deals and promos, including 2-for-1 lesson packages and cut rate prices.

Beyond resort participation, getting hard numbers was a big focus of the January initiative, says Mary Jo Tarallo, national director of LSSM. Those numbers are still trickling in, but include: 34 states, 19 state ski associations, 65 ski areas, 3 suppliers, 7 governor proclamations, 20,000 web visits, and, “most cool of all,” $3 million in free publicity.

“The beauty of this initiative is that it provides a consistent message nationally,” says Tarallo, who will survey resorts at the end of the season to get their numbers and feedback about the program. “While each state may have its own program, there is one message nationally: Humans were never meant to hibernate. This message seems to resonate with the media.”

Adds Sweetser: “We don’t need to create new learn-to-ski programs. Let’s just create a banner, and pull all of our programs underneath and see how it grows.”

Like many state associations and individual resorts, Maine used the LSSM banner to partner with media outlets to promote skiing and riding. Ski Maine partnered with Maine Today, the state’s dominant newspaper company, to sponsor a contest that gave out learn to ski packages to three families every week in January.

“In just the first week, we had more than 300 families enter,” Sweetser says. “We had great newspaper coverage every week and nearly 1 million impressions in the month.”

Ski Maine resorts also partnered with the city of Portland’s terrain park to sponsor lessons and demos every Wednesday afternoon in January and February up to the traditional vacation week to connect kids in the city with skiing and snowboarding.


Novel Approaches
Ski Areas of New York (SANY), which is already planning for next year’s LSSM, took the month-long promotion up a notch this season with a $200,000 budget. “We take the Model for Growth very seriously,” says Scott Brandi, president of SANY. “We have great buy-in and support from our members, large and small.”

All 28 SANY members offered 20 percent off their learn-to-ski and -ride packages during the month. “Before MLK weekend, we had over 3,100 downloads for the packages,” Brandi says.

SANY advertised the month-long promotion heavily, with more than 20 full page newspaper ads, radio spots, blast e-mails, press releases and a New York City media night.

Cataloochee, N.C., which always “does a bunch of lessons every year,” also took LSSM up a notch. Cataloochee, which routinely gives a free lesson to anyone who rents and buys a ticket Monday through Thursday, added two days a week to that promotion in January, and gave out return-day tickets to the first 250 participants.

“We ran out of those free tickets the first week of January,” says Chris Bates, general manager. “We’ve really worked on promoting learn to ski in general.”

He says ski patrollers hand out more than 1,000 coupons for free lessons every year to struggling skiers. “It’s just good long-term customer care. If we don’t get people having a good time when they ski, they won’t come back. A lesson is a way to get them to have a good time,” he explains.


Five Times Is the Charm
Park City has also built on the LSSM initiative with a five-time lesson promotion. Using the LSSM banner, Park City last year started the Start Now! program, which provides up to five $25 learn-to-ski or -ride packages for Utah residents.

“Research tells us that you need to experience something five times to become converted,” says Tom Pettigrew, Park City Resort ski school director. Of the 3,000 who participated in the Start Now! program last winter, about one-third took all five lessons, and 13 percent bought a pass.

“We don’t know how many more bought passes at other resorts,” he says.

Park City set a quota of 4,000 for the Start Now! program and easily reached that goal this season.

Despite its success, Pettigrew says the program is not a model for the industry. “Each resort is a unique property,” he says. “Every resort has different types of customers, different demographics, different geographical locations. What works at Park City Resort may not work at another area.” He suggests that each area must look at its own barriers to entry and develop a program that will take those barriers down.