These were among questions raised and answered, at least in part, at the 19th Annual Ski Travel Symposium, April 7-8, at Snowmass, Colo. Over 300 ski marketing specialists and their travel partners participated in two intensive days of presentations and workshops that examined the present and future.
Highlights included keynote speakers Ray Brady, CBS economic correspondent, and quality service expert Barry Sheehy. But also skiing’s own marketing pathfinders provided their road maps and charts for covering new byways.
The stage was set by the editors of Ski and Skiing magazines, Ed Pitoniak and Rick Kahl. The latter predicted the current season will end up on a par with, or slightly ahead of, last year’s 54 million skier visits, but not without a struggle. Said Kahl, “Skiers are a bit like Goldilocks: if it’s too cold, too warm, not enough snow or too much, they tend to stay home.” Keeping pace with a picture of aging demographics, and recognizing the needs of the youthful snowboard market are critical factors in the future, Kahl emphasized.
Pitoniak fired a salvo at mass media advertising, quoting statistics that showed huge inefficiencies of traditional media, namely print, in reaching skiers in the major markets. The key to efficient reach, predicted Pitoniak, will be to use specialized vehicles to negotiate the information superhighway to reach skiers more directly.
Pitoniak cited skiers’ propensity to use computers at home and work, and outlined the new technology that will take skiing’s messages directly to those users. Although he wasn’t predicting the demise of Ski magazine advertising, it became clear that the magazine’s parent company, The Skiing Company (part of Times Mirror Magazines), hopes to offer access to that highway as early as this fall with its own interactive information resources.
Reaching new skiers, however, never seemed to make it to the top of anyone’s agenda.
The Travel audience was urged to “get ready to go beyond the fax generation. Today’s savvy buyers don’t want to be manipulated; they want to participate.” Interactive, on-line computer services, they were told, will gain maximum reach with greater efficiency. Via the information superhighway, said Preview Media’s Bill Maulsby, marketing becomes more of a one-on-one relationship between buyer and seller and helps establish a loyalty and understanding heretofore not possible via traditional marketing channels.
Ironically, that same day in the New York Times Business Section, an article predicted a rough road for those pinning near-term success on riding the Info Superhighway. Regulatory uncertainty, sputtering mergers between communications giants and “no compelling evidence” that consumers are ready to navigate that route in the near future means “a rutted road ahead,” said The Times report.
In the aisles at the Ski Travel Symposium, most agreed. The roadway isn’t yet paved, but no one doubts its construction has begun. Those who follow its progress closely and head up the entrance ramp as soon as the ride is reasonably smooth will be out in front of the competition as the new century nears. Timing: anywhere from two to five years, most said. Advice: Keep on top of the Information Super Highway construction; it’s going to happen and you can’t afford to be left in the dust.
Symposium participants could take comfort in Ray Brady’s optimistic portrayal of an economy on the rebound. Consumer confidence is on the rise as indicated by increased borrowing and a stronger cash flow created by an extra $1 billion per month homeowners have pocketed in the last year by refinancing. Brady underscored that Wall Street’s wild ride this spring would have little impact on most Americans. He predicted continuing stability of oil prices, favoring air travel rates through the coming year.
It was keynoter Barry Sheehy, however, who had the audience most riveted. He likened the impact of globalization to that of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. “National borders are becoming less relevant; super markets rather than super governments are creating the global village before our eyes,” said Sheehy.
“People are becoming the key economic resource, not what’s in the ground. The shift in power is from the producer to the consumer,” Sheehy contends. Value is the winning formula, derived from how quality of product or service stacks up against price. The demand for quality is soaring worldwide, and buying decisions now move easily across old borders depending on this price/quality ratio. “The service industry is now facing the same tough choices that manufacturing did in the ’80s—downsizing, layoffs, restructuring,” Sheehy cautioned. As big a picture as he painted, the nuances for the ski industry were clear: provide quality products and services or face the consequences. Call it the “Quality Revolution.”
Breaking down the layers of middlemen to control costs and targeting service is the winning formula but it will cause a certain amount of dislocation before a company succeeds. Those who don’t change are destined for failure, said Sheehy.
When a questioner suggested that more services tend to increase the costs of doing business, Sheehy countered that waste in services is the real culprit. Companies that strive towards zero waste and zero errors in service or product come up winners every time; those resistant to change and improvement, that rest on their laurels, end up losers. He cited IBM and Sears as blatant examples of market leaders who neglected to adjust to change in consumer needs and demands.
“Current market leaders are often the least receptive to real change, and they end up dead,” Sheehy warned. “Every time you create a satisfied customer, it costs you less than having to make good on a problem that created an unsatisfied customer,” he concluded. Summary: Striving for excellence is a winning formula; anything short of that is a prescription for failure, because today’s consumers demand quality and will go elsewhere when they don’t receive it.
The industry had a thing or two to say about the price/value ratio and how best to create value. Panel leader Roger King, of Village Resort, Inc., advised that “value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; it’s not what it means to the service provider.” Mammoth Mountain’s Pam Murphy picked up that thread by emphasizing that delivery of service or promises is what determines the value of the skiing product today.
Fellow marketing panelists John Clifford, Killington, Vt., and Bob Kunkel, Vail, Colo., offered their own hit lists of what determines value in today’s ski experience.
“Cliff’s Golden Rules” included: 1. Keep it simple for new skiers. 2. Load them up with helpful information. 3. Let people progress at their own pace. 4. Don’t expect new customers back right away. Keep working your mailing lists. (His surveys indicate many don’t return for up to three years.) 5. Leave nothing to chance; guide skiers every step of the way. 6. People come back if they feel welcome, comfortable, good about their experiences. 7. Make sure your employees are happy or they won’t treat your customers well. 8. Remember that you are in the business of helping people have a good time.
Kunkel’s caveats on Value included: 1. A complaint about price is a complaint about unmet expectations. 2. Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten. (“Our guests are just little bundles of problems looking for compassion and understanding.”) 3. Create big value with little things like cleanliness, honesty, consistency, courtesy, guarantees.
Kunkel cautioned the audience about deciding what their customers want. “We were a bunch of 45-year-old guys in a room recently trying to make decisions on what new shops would be desirable at Beaver Creek. Then we realized, Holy cow, ask our spouses, ask our friends, ask our kids, ask your mother. We couldn’t effectively make that decision ourselves.” Clifford likewise underscored the need for ongoing research to determine customer needs and wants.
Perhaps the biggest chuckle of the two-day conclave in Snowmass was drawn by Kunkel when depicting ski area marketing decisions: Get an idea on Monday, run an ad on Tuesday, see no new business on Wednesday, and cancel the program on Thursday. “You have to give a new program a healthy infancy,” he advised. “Carefully feed it, nurture it, then if it doesn’t work, shoot it.”
More than once, two themes arose from those within and outside the industry. One, expressed by Kunkel, was that “we do ourselves a big disservice by always touting what’s new” in the past nine months, instead of asking people, “when was the last time you were here?” If Clifford’s stats are correct — that many customers don’t come back right away for a variety of reasons — then “what’s new” might better reflect changes over the past several years.
Meanwhile, both Brady and Sheehy, independently of one another, advised that the industry would be wise to avoid internecine warfare and to stick together in promoting the greater good of the sport. These remarks came after each had heard the audience or other panels talk of marketing concerns such as an aging skier population or the conflict between skiers and snowboarders.
The keynoters suggested skiing behave like other industries, citing the NFL, the NBA and golf, as several that had faced a no-growth market and had succeeded in creating a turnaround. How? By industry PR, advertising and promotion that touts the sport’s best features and appeals to markets not reached successfully by individual marketing efforts.
What a novel idea!
If not every session at the 19th annual Ski Travel Symposium was as riveting as others, those in the aisles and during the all-important after-hour networking, agreed that this gathering is a must for ski marketing and sales personnel. It generates new ideas and recycles concepts that work time-after-time. The 80-inch snow depths at Snowmass looked tempting, but few attendees were willing to let the competition take home the good ideas by swapping pen and paper for boots and skis. They were there to work and the organizers saw to it that there should be a long-time payback for those who did.
