After a couple of lackluster summers and big dropoffs in meeting business, ski areas are putting more resources than ever into their summer marketing and operations. Whatever their niche—events, golf, water parks, even summer tubing—resorts are doing more of it. Marketing is more targeted and sales forces are pounding the pavement to drum up meeting business. Many resorts are holding and even cutting prices, adding more flexibility and amenities to their package offerings, and going after business they never went after before.
The strategy is a carryover from last summer and helped many ski area summer operations overcome wet, cool weather and a still slumping tourism market to post reasonable, in a few cases, record summers.
Camelback, Pa., for example, had a record summer at its waterpark after it cut prices midseason to make up for a slow start due to the weather. Big Sky, Mont., had a record conference summer after it, too, adjusted its rates and marketing to go after more local groups. And Snowshoe, W.V., Wintergreen, Va., and Shanty Creek and Boyne USA in Mich., all overcame a wet summer and national downward trend in golf to post up years. How did they do it? Here’s a look at some of the trends in summer operations and marketing.
Golf
In a down industry, marketing and positioning are critical.
“We spent a lot of money on marketing our golf last summer,” said Bill Hungate, vice president of marketing at Snowshoe. “Despite a very wet summer, we were up about five percent in contrast to the region where golf was down about 15 percent.”
Other big ski and golf resorts also attributed their success last summer to aggressive marketing and more flexible packages.
“Our golf and tennis packages used to be very popular,” said Kelley Davidson, vice president of sales and marketing at Wintergreen. “What we’ve seen since 9/11 is that families and guests don’t want to be forced into time decisions with packages. They want flexibility.”
As a result, Davidson said Wintergreen has added many more amenities and activities for all ages that families and guests pick and choose through its VIP Passport program. “Because families have moved away from the package, we’re providing them additional activities and elements they can do together as a family,” he said.
Shanty Creek and Boyne USA, two other big golf operations, are also adding more amenities to complement their golf packages, and offering more “unlimited” golf packages.
“The unlimited golf packages are extremely popular,” said Mark Zucco, marketing director at Shanty Creek. “We’re also skewing a lot more of our golf packages to families, and discounted rates to juniors. Golf, nationally, is down considerably. We were also down slightly, but did much better than the prior summer.”
Boyne USA, with three golf operations in Michigan, also had good success with unlimited golf packages. It will hold the line on pricing and greens fees this coming summer, said Julie Ard, public relations manager.
Meetings and Conferences
Pricing and a more local focus also helped Big Sky, Mont., to its best-ever summer conference season.
“We don’t want to have to come off our rates, but sometimes we do, especially for local and regional groups which we really focused on last summer,” said Meg O’Leary, sales and marketing director.
Since 9/11 and the huge drop in meeting business, O’Leary said Big Sky “was considering business we never would have before.”
She said the resort will continue that strategy this summer “without losing our focus on national destination business that we are really designed for.”
Other resorts are also focusing heavily on local groups and family groups—reunions and weddings—to fill their meeting rooms. Marketing remains hard.
“The key thing is maintaining an ongoing dialogue with groups,” said Shanty Creek’s Zucco. “We have a sales force of seven or eight people who do nothing but outbound calls.”
“Our number one marketing strategy is just to go out and pound the pavement, make sales calls, make connections,” said Jane Eshbaugh, marketing director at Holiday Valley, N.Y.
“Businesses and associations are staying very close to home so we’re focusing on our drive market,” Wintergreen’s Davidson said. “We’re going back to old relationships.”
Counter to many ski areas where the focus was on smaller groups, Snowshoe went after larger groups with its “big tent” strategy. “We don’t have a big conference facility,” Hungate said. “We have a lot of smaller rooms. We leased a big tent for the whole summer and with that were able to attract large conferences, 600 to 700 people. Before, the largest group we could host was 300. The tent worked well and we’re going to do it again.”
Snowshoe is also going after more camp business—churches, youths—to fill beds midweek. “We ran a few last summer which were very successful,” Hungate said.
Other areas are also focusing more heavily on camps. Ascutney, Vt., plans to host more instructional camps, adding soccer and golf to its tennis camp, and offering them to both children and adults. “In the past our tennis camp was aimed just at children,” said Bill Henne, marketing director. “This year we’re going to offer golf and tennis instructional camps for adults too.”
Taos, N.M., has also had good success with instructional camps: German, ballet and chamber music. The schools run from six to eight weeks.
Events
Events remain a major driver of summer business for many ski areas.
“Snowshoe is so remote we need a big hook to make people want to come,” Hungate said. Events are the hook for summer tourists at many ski areas. Most plan to add more events or improve the quality of existing events. Many ski areas close to towns partner with the local communities to offer an array of summer events to draw business. (See story on page 58.)
“We do events hand-in-hand with the community,” Big Sky’s O’Leary said. “On some we tag along; on others we take more of the lead. We’ve gotten great business out of that. We’re going to try and enhance all of the events this summer, add bigger names to the concert series. The focus is not so much quantity as quality.”
Marketing
Summer marketing is getting more aggressive and expensive, although still a fraction of the winter budget. Ascutney plans to double its entire marketing effort, winter and summer, and take aim at more day travelers.
“We’ve always gone more after the destination visitor,” Henne said. “We’ve had great success advertising in the travel guides. Now we’re also starting to concentrate on the day traveler as well.”
Holiday Valley aims most of its summer marketing at winter visitors. “We try to take advantage of the half million people who are here in the winter to let them know about our summer offerings,” Eshbaugh said.
At Aspen, where the local chamber of commerce takes the lead on summer marketing efforts, Hanna Pevny, president and CEO, said the target is a lifestyle rather than a demographic. “We’re aiming at activity-driven, outdoor-driven, recreation-driven people, a person who wants to do it all,” Pevny said. “Last summer we called them ‘weekend warriors.’ That was the profile we’re looking for.”
Based on travel trends, Pevny said the chamber last summer focused its efforts on Colorado’s Front Range. This summer the chamber will supplement that with another key market: Florida, Texas, California or New York. “We have a $400,000 budget which is pretty small,” Pevny said. “We need to identify key markets.”
Coming attractions
Finally, no summer business piece would be complete without mentioning Tenney Mt., N.H., which last summer attracted 4,000 paying customers to its first-in-the-nation summer tubing hill.
“A lot of areas are looking at what we’re doing,” said Dan Egan, Tenney general manager. “Temperature independent snow is here to stay.”
This summer Tenney will double its snowmaking capacity with a 100-ton machine, which will enable the resort to offer skiing and riding, including camps and competitions, along with tubing. Tenney will also bring in a downhill mountain bike race series from mid-May to October.
“The demographics are extremely good,” says Egan. “The bikes are expensive. The riders are dedicated consumers. We want to become the center of this sport in New England. We’ll run our lifts and charge for a ticket, so they can train.”
Elsewhere, Boyne is building Michigan’s largest indoor water park, which will miss the summer season, but be open in time for next winter.
In the race to become four-season resorts, it seems that the seasons themselves are becoming irrelevant.
