“What was applied in the trade did not stem from a textbook study of marketing principles or from the expertise of ad agencies. The sudden surge of package rates, discounts and special deals was an instinctive response by area operators to do something about a bad situation which threatened to get worse. The skier market had been threatened by the energy crisis, discouraged by a bad snow year and worried by an economy in which they were losing the race with inflation. Chances were that many skiers would drop out of the sport for a year, and perhaps, not return. Prospects of nonskiers entering the market under these circumstances were even dimmer. The writing on the wall was clearly that nothing less than a concentrated, beefed-up effort to bring skiers onto the slopes would suffice.
“… Call it an awakening, if you will, for there was in the mind of every area operator a new awareness that the potential for increased business had to be tested and that the future of the business depended upon the success of those efforts to ‘go after the business’—to pursue the consumer market in new and ingenious ways at a time when it was most insecure.”
The above quote is from Phil Camp in the Eastern Ski Areas Association Marketing Resource Manual, January, 1976. The industry did see things get better, culminating in a record season in 1978-79. Now we find ourselves fretting about the same concerns, although late summer retail activity combined with A.C. Nielsen’s generous “addition” of 4.1 million people to the rank of skiers in the nation, a 28 percent increase over three years ago, indicates there is some good news out there, even if adjusted downward.
Because he’s been publishing SAM for 20 years, I can’t help but believe that David Rowan has heard and seen all this before. In fact, in the three years I’ve been writing “The Marketplace,” for SAM, I’ve decided that some marketers in this industry are: 1) deaf, 2) unaware of history and therefore forced to repeat it, 3) still not reading the newspaper in spite of my advice to do that in my first column in the summer of 1979.
That is not across the board. There have been some very clever marketers in this industry and some real success stories. Because the best marketing ideas deserve to be documented and shared, I am embarking on a project for SAM to gather and publish case histories of the best in ski area marketing. These case histories will reflect successful and unsuccessful attempts to improve a ski area’s visibility in the marketplace, expand its share of market or serve some other marketing or public relations goals. The format will include the identification of a target market or of a marketing problem; the setting of goals; the development of the actual program including budget, staff and time commitments and a timetable; the actual implementation; and the documented results. The people who managed the program will be highlighted in the narrative.
I hope the readers of this column will be forthcoming in sharing experiences—even those programs that didn’t work—because collectively the industry can learn from each other. Chapters of this new book will include all aspects of marketing: sales, promotion, advertising, product design, public affairs, publicity, media events, charitable activities, the development of new markets and market research.
Because of the marketing book, and because I am moving on to other opportunities, this will be my last “Marketplace” column for SAM. Writing it has been fun, but even more fun will be getting back into the business of marketing a product. I’ll be marketing director for a remarkably beautiful ski resort that is identified by my peers— and others—as remote, inaccessible and too challenging, its reputation derived from some very steep runs on the town side of the mountain. In addition, the owner’s expansion plans are deemed by some to be unrealistic in today’s economy. My assignment, since I choose to accept it, is to increase skier days by 20 percent and to increase our share of market in Colorado.
Telluride, here I come!
