“What’s up, Slats?” I said.
“Everybody here is happy. Very strange. They got great snow, sales are good and they think they finally have a handle on the marketing problem.”
“And you think they’re wrong?”
“Irrational exuberance is what it is.”
“Why?”
“Well, they got great snow but it will melt. The economy was good up until mid-season and now that’s melting, especially for the dot.com wiseacres who were one of the prime real estate markets. The smart guys do have a handle on the marketing problem, which is getting first-time skiers to become 15-day skiers—what NSAA calls the growth model. But most first-time skiers don’t start at areas run by smart guys.”
“Explain, please.”
“Where did you learn to ski? Aspen? Vail?”
“Tantamount. You know that.”
“Right. That’s where half the skiers in the Five Cities area learned. The other half learned across the valley at Razorback. What’s Tantamount doing to retain new skiers?”
“Umm, I dunno.”
“What could they do?”
“Free second lesson? Concentrated five-day guaranteed program? Free pre-ski clinics and wine-and-cheese après ski? Free season pass if you stick it out five days in ski school?”
“Are they doing any of that?”
“Nope. If they are, they’re not telling anyone about it.”
“So the drop-out rate is going to stay at 90 percent at Tantamount?”
“I guess so.”
“Meanwhile, Aspen and Vail and Taos and a bunch of other really cool, expensive resorts are spending big bucks buying a one or two percent improvement in their own drop-out rate, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How many Five Cities residents are gonna spend three grand for a week in Vail to learn to ski?”
“Umm, none?”
“Close enough. What’s wrong with the picture, here?”
“The wrong people are coming up with the solutions.”
“Sort of. The wrong people are marketing the solutions.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Look, say you’re the marketing guy at Tantamount. You and the ski school director put your heads together and come up with a cool program to keep first-time skiers coming back. It works. Your retention rate doubles, and profits are up.”
“That’s good.”
“That’s great. But over at Razorback, they’re not as smart as you are. They see that your traffic is up a bit, but your profitability is way up. Their business is flat. So they go for the low-ball season pass. Half the new committed skiers you trained take the bait, and you lose ’em. You’re back to square one and you’re getting less for your pass because you had to match the Razorback price.”
“Umm, yeah.”
“And even if you don’t have Razorback to keep you honest, a lot of your new skiers are going to flake off to bigger resorts. The big beneficiaries of your good work are Alta and Steamboat.”
“That’s bad.”
“Hey, small ski areas think this way. Nobody wants to jump first.”
“What you’re saying is that everybody in a region has to adopt a growth model program or no one will? Isn’t that collusion or price-fixing or something?”
“Dunno. Tantamount and Razorback don’t have the same growth model programs. They can have competing programs. But they gotta have something.”
“What do you think is the best way to keep beginners coming back?”
“Same formula that worked 40 years ago. How did the first ski areas get their traffic, back when there were no committed skiers nearby?”
“Taught ’em, I guess.”
“Yup. And how did they keep the new skiers coming back? I’ll tell you how: they showed new skiers a good time. Encouraged the ski instructors to woo new skiers. You think everyone had a great time rolling around in the snow in wool sweaters, breaking their ankles in leather boots? Nobody liked that. What they liked is that the instructor dragged them into the bar after skiing, got out the booze and the guitars. Made music, made dancing, made love if it came to that. They had a skier retention program without thinking about it.”
“We don’t do that anymore?”
“Nah. You market to families. Everything’s squeaky clean. The only people hanging out in the base lodge bar are Gen-X singles, who are way too cool to sing or dance before midnight, and football fans. The families arrive packaged in cars, and at the end of the day you load ’em back into their cars. The really good ski instructors are older folks, who go home to their own families. Most beginner lessons are taught by kids with no social skills. So the base lodge is empty by five, even on Saturday night. It’s tragic.”
“So what do we do?”
“You do what keeps families coming back. All the Disneyland garbage: the tubing hills and snowbikes and sleigh rides. But make sure your staff has a reason to hang around and have fun with the guests after the lifts close down. Put music in the base lodge, stand a round of free drinks or hot chocolate for anyone who took a lesson. Look around here. You got this whole roomful of ski industry types having fun tonight, drinking and lying to each other. They’d all be doing a lot better if they spent two nights a week drinking and lying with their customers, like God intended.”
About Slats: If you grew up in Chicago, you read Mike Royko’s column in the Daily News. When that paper folded, Mike moved to the Sun-Times, then finished his career at the Tribune. Royko’s alter ego was the street smart Slats Grobnik, a denizen of the West Side bars and ward rooms. Slats Grabski is Grobnik’s no-account ski bum nephew. Write to him through [email protected].
