Winter resorts work hard at providing visitors with satisfying products and services. To aid in this task, many resorts conduct ongoing customer-satisfaction tracking studies that ask visitors to evaluate a wide variety of resort-related attributes: traveling to the base area facilities, the on-mountain product, employee services, restaurants, accommodations, plus other services such as equipment rentals, lessons, child care and retail shops.
Such studies provide excellent baselines for monitoring visitors’ perceptions of the products and services. The results can be compared to industry averages as well as prior and future surveys conducted at the same resort to get a measure of how the resort is doing.
Although these studies are important, many resort managers believe they have serious limitations. Managers are unsure of the validity of the answers due to large number of questions that can lead to numbing and simple repetition of a single numerical answer (e.g., all 7s on a scale from 1 to 10). Furthermore, because many of the questions ask an evaluation of things that occurred at a much earlier point in time, customers may not accurately recall the service and their reaction to it. These issues do not invalidate the studies, they simply show some of the measurement weaknesses.
The difficulty in turning the results of these studies into specific action plans is another matter altogether. In comprehensive studies such as these, it is not feasible to ask the customers for more detail, yet management desperately needs to identify weaknesses specifically in order to improve or correct them.
Another serious limitation is the use of the ratings of all resort’s products and services to predict the customer’s desire to return to the resort. In-depth analyses for some resorts show that a coin-toss is a better predictor of desire to return than is the combined ratings of all the individual ratings. This result indicates ski resorts may be missing the majority of the things that determine a desire to return to the resort.
In order to improve products and services, it is important to look at the fundamental reason that customer-satisfaction studies are undertaken in the first place. They usually have two purposes: (1) a desire to increase repeat visits and potentially create resort loyalists, and (2) to increase the level of positive word-of-mouth referrals in order to get more new visitors.
Given the above two objectives and looking at the battery of items asked in customer-satisfaction studies, it is apparent that the problem in predicting desire to return is: the attributes asked about are logical, but the motivations behind the desire to return are emotional. At the same time, much of the marketing of service experiences are about emotion. In fact, emotions have been the crux of advertising since the 1950s and the role of emotional satisfaction in the consumption of experiential products has been the subject of marketing literature for almost a decade.
Do skiers and snowboarders talk to friends about outrageously great days they had in terms of the lifts, food, low prices? Seldom. They do, however, tell people about outrageously great days that were due to skiing/boarding accomplishments, deep camaraderie with friends on the slope, great family times with their kids or any combination of these things. And sure, great snow and or sunshine can play a role in this, but they probably have outrageously great days in bad weather, too.
The lifts, snow quality, food, low prices, etc. are logical, but usually secondary to the true product being purchased. What is the actual product being purchased? This is an interesting question, the answer to which varies by market segment and is worthy of a whole other essay. For now, let’s assume the product being purchased is a combined sense of fun, freedom, personal growth and quality family time. These aspects are all emotional. The emotions are the experience. The attributes rated in the customer satisfaction studies deal with the things that can make the product better, but the studies never ask or deal with the actual product—the emotions. The emotional experience is the product. And managing the emotional experience is the Next Frontier in providing true customer satisfaction.
How do we define the emotional product, measure the satisfaction with it and manipulate the resort to increase the probability of its successful occurrence? Managing this Next Frontier begins with three research tools.
Many resorts currently use the first tool, focus groups, to hear from customers directly. These qualitative research methods also can be used to explore the emotional elements of the experience. Many professional researchers have the appropriate training in psychology and sociology to draw out a vast amount of information that is difficult for participants to reveal without guidance. Focus groups are the best tool for learning about the emotional aspects of the resort visit that need to be considered in order to fulfill the visitor’s deeper needs. Focus groups can be expensive and often require facilitators with training in uncovering deeper-level thoughts.
Another technique frequently used in industry is the use of Mystery Shoppers, which also has been used by some winter resorts in recent years. Objective Mystery Shoppers, who are not affiliated with the resort, can develop very specific and unbiased information about service and product qualities that affect logical and emotional experiences. This service can provide the basis for very explicit action plans: where signs are needed, which employees need further training, etc. It is vital to use shoppers who are well versed in resort management issues, and it is beneficial if they understand the results from the focus groups in terms of knowing what aspects to pay attention to that drive emotional satisfaction.
The third research tool, participant observation, is a relatively new procedure used by many large packaged-goods marketers and hospitality services. In this procedure, a guest party is recruited to allow an observer to spend a half-day with them. During that time, the trained observer notes the emotional highs and lows that the group experiences and also what the resort did (or could do) to increase the probability of the highs or reduce the probability of the lows. This technique draws on anthropologic studies in order to see very subtle shifts in the tone of the experience and to assess the forces that are causing the shifts. Participant observation provides the richest understanding of what drives the emotional experience of the visitor. From the procedure, managers can become aware of connections such as how the cutting of trees for a new lift can kill the emotional sense of comfort or how instructors need to help their students grow though enduring inclement weather. Downsides include high costs and the availability of trained observers.
Applying the results of these research tools can be the next step for ski areas interested in managing the visitor’s emotional experience: the Next Frontier. By understanding the emotional experience and gaining very specific details on what needs to be altered, both the resort and the sport will be healthier.
