It’s a question that even experienced skiers and snowboarders might ask themselves on a holiday weekend, when liftlines can be long and tempers short, conditions icy and highways dicey. And if it’s challenging for experienced skiers, what kind of fun are first-timers having?

Well, not very much, according to Joe Hession and his team at SNOW Operating LLC. Hession, a former Intrawest GM at the beginner-oriented Mountain Creek, N.J., monitors traffic patterns at 16 (and growing) ski resorts across North America. SNOW Operating has applied the principles of Lean Six Sigma process management to analyze how first-timers negotiate the parking lot, base lodge, washrooms, rental desks, and lesson time.

Its findings? First-timers spend about 10 percent of their time actually “having fun” at a ski resort—that is, 10 percent of their time involves an ephemeral and entirely personal experience such as enjoying fresh mountain air, or overcoming gravity (not to mention fear) and successfully negotiating those first few runs that can send someone on a lifelong journey of snowsports ecstasy.


Action from Analysis
The barriers to entry for neophyte skiers and boarders are well documented, along with the sport’s low retention rate and a decade’s worth of efforts to improve. But SNOW Operating and its analytics-based Process Improvement and Terrain Based Learning (TBL) programs have shown there are ways to improve outcomes.

SNOW Operating currently works with resort partners of varying size: behemoths like Whistler Blackcomb and Killington; feeder-style resorts like Camelback, Pa., and mid-sized resorts like Brian Head, outside of St George, Utah.

Hession likes to say that “People, process, and product equal profit.”

“The ski industry does two of these three things incredibly well,” he notes. “It has a tremendous product in winter sports—the thrill of speed, scenery, and a great atmosphere. The people are some of the most dedicated, evangelistic, you could ever meet. But the process is challenging. And that’s a key element in failing to retain first-timers.”

Hession and SNOW Operating put resort staff members through several “analysis exercises” to show where even incremental improvements can be made. The main components: Process mapping forces resort staff to look at every step a newcomer takes, “mapping” the journey from parking lot to lesson to lunch to the bathroom and then back to the parking lot at the end of the day. Process cycle efficiency measures where, and how well, resorts add value to the process. Rating each step of the process reveals just how much of it is not fun—i.e., filling out forms, waiting in line, waiting for the lesson to begin—and how much adds value—fitting boots, sliding on snow, and receiving useful instruction, information, or advice. Once staff have mapped the current state of affairs, they can begin streamlining and improving the “cycle” of efficiency.

Hession adds, “You have to look at the whole piece and deliver a great experience that will meet, if not exceed, the guest’s expectations of what their day will be like. When you tell general managers that we’re going to be getting rid of lesson times, because we want to make sure that first-timers get as much time as they need to develop skills, well, there’s a lot of push-back.

“And frankly, 10 percent [fun time] is not enough. We should be aiming for 50 percent. If you can do things like physically eliminate the number of steps from the parking lot to the rental shop to the bathroom from 1,500 steps down to 300 steps, then you have potentially freed up a lot of time for people to enjoy themselves and have fun.”


Getting Inside Brian Head
Brian Head Resort is one of the areas that has embraced many aspects of SNOW Operating’s process management. It went through the program last fall.

Chris Brown, Brian Head’s indoor operations director, says, “Our terrain park manager met with Joe Hession at SAM’s Cutters Camp last year. We decided that we must be proactive and begin converting our guests into avid, life-long skiers and riders. Everyone—from upper management to front line staff—would be on the ground floor of change.”

Brown says, “Management’s buy-in came from the facts that were coming out, about the ski industry slowly decaying across the nation. We were seeing dollar bills flying out the door that we could have just as easily captured and held on to. We knew that the whole process for first timers—from the time that they arrived in the parking lot until they left at the end of the day—needed to be re-imagined.”

Because of the intense scrutiny and potential criticism it can bring on resort operations, “process improvement” can bring changes in management structure, not to mention a few bruised egos along with it. At Brian Head, Brown says that “Joe facilitated some honest conversations, because he wasn’t backing any particular dog in the fight.” And there was a recognition that things had to change. “If we thought we’d been doing things right, we wouldn’t have called upon his expertise in the first place.”

Several key areas for improvement were quickly identified, most notably, the kids’ ski school. “Number one, kids have a short attention span, and we were making them wait to buy a lift ticket, to register for lessons, and to get rentals,” Brown recalls. Immediately, Brian Head tasked the kids’ ski school director with looking after lift tickets as well—a significant re-adjustment in procedure.

“Then, we streamlined the rental process. No more having kids hop over in one ski boot to get the tech to adjust their bindings. Into two boots, the tech takes their boot size, and adjusts the binding accordingly.” Brown reckons that Brian Head is one of just a handful of ski resorts that are doing this.

Finally, Brian Head staggered lesson times to align with when kids were actually ready to start skiing. That had other unintended benefits: “It was a big burden on the lift operators to have dozens of kids come out at once,” Brown says.

To further manage the number of lessons and ensure a quality experience, Brown instituted two radical notions. Number one was that there would not be more than eight kids in any individual lesson—even during peak holiday periods. Number two was that all lessons had to be booked on-line, in advance.

Needless to say, Brown was sticking his neck out on number two. “At our early meetings with Joe, I brought up the point that perhaps there might be some life lessons for people who wanted to book ski lessons with us. We knew that we would be turning away walk-up traffic. We even had to adjust our prices upward to compensate for lost business. It was a huge adjustment, but our guests actually supported us. The vast majority of our guests received these changes very well. They told us we were delivering what we promised.”

The change in both confidence and ambience has been remarkable. Brown enthuses: “It’s clear to us that our guests have appreciated the changes 100 percent. We have been taking surveys on the system as it is now, and the comment that we hear the most is that the changes in processes make the experience better.”

In short, Brian Head was showing its novice skiers and riders a good time. People were having fun. And though it’s still early, Brown and his team are confident that they’ll come back.


Closing the Cycle
Of course, resorts utilizing Process Cycle Efficiency—or paying for it—want accountability. To that end, SNOW Operating covers the participation fees of its 22 client resorts for RRC’s conversion dashboard, to monitor results and determine value.

“We sell the system, but the resort is in command of the process,” Hession says. “Though it’s there to increase conversion rates, Process Cycle Efficiency still has to integrate within the resort’s brand. TBL is a tool. The resort designs, builds, then seeds the program and makes it their own.”

If Process Cycle Efficiency is implemented properly, it’s barely noticed, even by the managers. Hession says, “SNOW Operating is primarily a change management organization. Our job is to create a culture of conversion throughout the entire resort. Brian Head was skeptical about their very own numbers [this season], because line-ups weren’t nearly as long as they used to be in the rental facility. But when they ran the numbers, they found that it was actually busier.”

Brown’s advice for the rest of the ski industry? Simply, go for it.

“SNOW Operating has very intelligent staff that all share the same passion of growing the industry,” Brown says. “We have developed a very good relationship with them, from taking all of our phone calls to immediately answering e-mails. The traditional consulting/client relationship has been lost—for the better. They prefer to be our teammates and friends.

“The most important job of any ski resort is ultimately to encourage an atmosphere where fun is the key. We all have to believe in a process that sets our students up for success. I believe that we’ve encouraged new guests to come and join the fun by reducing the ‘fear factor.’ I also believe that our process changes have shown our lifelong guests that we, too, can be as efficient as any other resort. Let’s be honest with ourselves and not settle for mediocrity any longer.”

So the question becomes, how much effort do you expend converting a first-timer into a life-long skier or snowboarder? One who will embrace the sybaritic pursuit of sliding on snow, which leads to a virtuous circle of sharing the sport with friends, family, co-workers, and who will gladly exchange their hard-earned after-tax dollars for the privilege of coming to your mountain?

Revamping your resort’s processes to make them more successful will almost certainly repay the up-front investment of time and money many times over.