Based on personal experience with bus tour groups while working at a midwestern alpine ski area, I’m skeptical. The tours I saw were at best labeled “destruction derbies.” The long bus ride to the snow from Chicago or Milwaukee became an excuse for a mass drinking bout. Cooped up for hours, the skiers would go mildly beserk the minute they arrived at their destination. The resort may have gotten the numbers they were looking for, but they never fully recovered from the property damage and loss of goodwill to more peaceful guests caused by the rowdy revellers.
But cross-country skiers are different, less party-oriented. True, and granted that bus transportation has worked well for operators like Recreational Equipment (REI) in Seattle which offers cross-country skiers bus rides to and from the Snoqualmie Pass region on Saturdays and Sundays during the ski season.
The REI idea is fine, cross-country skiers tell me, but when it comes to being herded onto buses to go for a day of planned activity at a specific resort, they balk. Cross-country skiers are independent by nature. Rather than travel 50 to a bus, they prefer travelling six to a compact car, free to go where and when they wish.
Talking with a cross-section of major touring center operators, I found exactly half of the centers had been successful with bus tours. Sixty percent of those had found working with affinity groups, such as ski clubs and churches, the best sources of tour groups. Twenty percent worked their tours through sporting goods shops. The remaining 20 percent worked on joint tour promotions with either a travel agency or media (radio, TV, newspaper) agency.
Judging from the responses, day and weekend trips are the only trips that work. Extended (three-to-five-day) tour packages have flopped where they’ve been tried.
Excluding travel costs (arranged by the group, shop or agency), a typical day tour price includes a lesson, trail pass and rental equipment. Northfield mountain in Massachusetts charges $14 per skier for bus tour groups. California’s Royal Gorge charges $7-12 depending on the equipment needs of the group and another California center, Kirkwood, charges $15 for a short lesson, trail pass fee and mini tour package. Typical of a full weekend package is Royal Gorge’s $120-130 offering that includes lodging, four meals, trail passes and instruction.
Twenty percent of the touring center operators I talked with said they were getting repeat business from bus tour groups. Most, however, said too many tours were one-shot ventures or that once burned by the low profitability of bus tour groups, they gave up the promotion of bus tours.
Among those who feel bus tours have positive potential is John Wiggin of the Woodstock Cross Country Center in Vermont. Wiggin said, “If you get involved in bus tours, make sure the tour group has a single leader who collects the money and pays in one lump sum for the entire group. Also if the group plans to rent equipment, have them fill out rental cards in advance of arriving at your center. Rental cards can be mailed in advance to the tour group leader.”
Tom Kelly of Telemark Lodge in Wisconsin pointed up another problem, saying, “Telemark is a perfect place for bus tour groups because of our facilities, but in the past some bus tour groups have asked us to help them find less expensive accommodations. We would arrange the accommodations at some nearby resort counting on the trail pass revenue from the group. But all to often, once they had settled into another resort, the group would stay put and we’d lose the trail fee revenue.”
John Slouber of Royal Gorge sees bus tour groups as impinging on valuable instructor time. “Our instructors time is valuable,” he said. “Too often the amount of time spent giving a bus tour group a lesson takes our instructors away from more lucrative private and group lessons.”
At Mt. Bachelor, Oregon, Bob Mathews has a solution for the instructor problem: “We let the group, no matter its size, have one instructor for a half hour. The instructor gives them the basics and then turns the group loose to ski the trails. You have to watch bus tours though, because they can strain your rental and instructional resources if you’re not careful.” Mathews said his experience with bus tour groups is limited, but he has devised a group discount package and Bachelor’s marketing department is selling it to affinity groups.
Without the blessing of a marketing department, I’d devise a comprehensive day tour package program that includes trail pass, basic instruction (or mini tour as Kirkwood does) and equipment. Start by selling a few dates when you’d like to try bus tours—slack periods between major holidays or at season’s end are best. Then, send a mailing to ski clubs, church groups and sport shops in your marketing area with the dates and rates for your proposed bus tour ski days. Make it clear that the group sets up the transportation and that your fee covers them once they are at the area. Once you’ve established some tours, follow Wiggin’s advice about having a leader from the group take care of payments and rental forms prior to arrival.
If your initial day tours work well, consider expanding into weekend trips. Don’t bite off the two-day package tours until you have the one day trips working smoothly.
