SAM Coverage
Linda Goodspeed
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Is Racing Coming Back?
Pam Cruickshank, marketing director at Okemo, Vt., knows firsthand about the racing resurgence at some U.S. ski resorts. “We had an 80-year-old woman win…
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Pre-Season Bookings
At the risk of jinxing the entire 1999-2000 ski season…so far, so great. “After last year, I thought there might be a kind of…
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Taking a Look at Food
“I think we’ve spoiled our guests,” confessed Julie Wilson, food and beverage manager at Deer Valley, Ut., “They expect unique, wonderful cuisine every day.”…
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Consumer Show Strategies
Fewer but bigger tents, more booking agents and a more diversified product will greet attendees at this fall’s consumer ski shows. As merger mania…
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El Niño Makes Most Happy
Blame it on El Niño. The 1997-98 ski season is the first year since I have been writing season wrapups in which everyone—well, almost…
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Frequent Skier Deals on the Rise
Not too long ago the only program for frequent skiers was the season pass. No more, especially in the face of consolidation. One of…
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Finding Employees
With a booming national economy creating “a job for everybody,” the question facing ski areas heading into the 1997-98 ski season is: “Will there…
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Publicizing Good Deeds
The sometimes uneasy coexistence between ski areas and the environment has come a long way since the public relations disaster several years ago when…
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Retaining Employees With Incentives
Free skiing may be a powerful incentive for attracting and retaining employees, but in today’s increasingly competitive job market, many ski resorts are finding…
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Get Ready for the Snowplayers
From his office at Mountain High ski area in southern California, General Manager Karl Kapuscinski is following several trends, the first of which is…
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Consolidation Gets Mixed Reviews
“Everybody’s talking about ‘market synergy’ and the ‘synergy of size’ that’s going to result from all these mergers,” said Ted Motschman, general manager of…
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Slicing And Dicing The Market
If ski area marketers sliced up the ski market, how many slices would they get? Answer: They’re still slicing. Market segmentation, or as Bob…
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An Extremely Bizarre Season
The 1993-94 ski season will be remembered for extremes — extremes of weather, of business, and lest we are so ungrateful as to forget,…
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Last Year’s “Ethics Problem” Has Become “What Ethics Problem?”
Area flyovers, trail counts increasing overnight, exaggerated ski report conditions, stuffed ballot boxes … Does the U.S. ski industry have an ethics problem? Problem?…
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Priorities For NSAA
From Maine to California, from Washington to New Hampshire, ski area operators are saying the “environment” is the issue they want their national organization…
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What A Season!
Of all years for Marvin Kottke to send out his annual end-of-the-season survey to ski areas early. “Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem to…
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The Ski Sizzle Of Martin Luther King Day
The talk of the NSAA trade show at Mt. Snow was, “How do you get on the Wachusett Mountain map?” The Wachusett “map” was…
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Impacts Of Recession? It Depends!
Figure this one out: The worse the economy, the better the ski business. Don’t believe it? Just ask John McGregor, general manager of Boyne…