Monday, April 29, 2024

Ski Area Marketing 101

skimarketing

The ski area business is tough. Bad weather, high operating costs, and most importantly, old school thinking, make it hard to make a buck. But we don’t like hiking, so it’s important to us that ski areas stay in business. We’ve come up with a few suggestions to really improve the marketing of any given resort.

  1. Never give out free tickets. It doesn’t matter if it’s a company shooting their ad camp for the next calendar year, or a video production company filming for a major release, giving away free tickets will make you look weak! Pretty soon EVERY ONE will be expecting to get free tickets just because they are going to give you free promotion on their blog. If someone complains and points out it costs you basically nothing to give them a ticket, blame the Forest Service, even if you are not on National Forest Service land.
  2. When you get bad publicity, send an angry letter. It’s good to forward around the offensive material around the office first and get some other input. That way you’ll have a solid chain of anger to show the offender.  Nothing will shut people up like showing them exactly how far your head is up your ass.
  3. If someone does decide to shoot at your resort, do whatever ever possible to ensure they don’t get good shots. Figure out where they are filming from and stick a banner or flag right in their way. This will make them realize who is boss, and they will likely give you all the shots, as they will be useless for anything else.
  4. Be very afraid of new media. People who use things like Twitter are the same ones who have started snowboarding in the streets. You want nothing to do with them. You’ll find the most success dealing exclusively with the daily newspapers.

If you follow these simple steps, you’ll be sure to keep your resort stocked with paying guests, (at least until they turn 70 in a few years.) Better yet, you won’t have to worry about a ton of snowboard-types messing up your base lodges and scraping off all the snow. If you are still having trouble with your marketing strategy, be sure to check out handy our marketing glossary and some successful examples as well.

9 COMMENTS

  1. Yeah pretty much like that…. don’t forget verbal floggings for going faster than the dinosaurs they have as mountain hosts, ducking ski area boundrys (doesn’t seem to be a problem in BC), and my favorite the heart failure induced by figure 8 brodies in the snow covered parkinglot.

  2. You totally forgot to force any photographers that might actually get a decent shot at your resort to buy expensive, silly insurance with their own money that protects your ski area and the Forest Service. Way to blow it Geery!

  3. Figures.. fucking openly trade corporate old school Stiffs (NEW MEDIA whats that?), -Imagine what it was like Brooke to do the same thing in 1993 or 1994 to build a park,The resort didn’t want anything to do with you, now with post Olympic prophecies fulfilled, X Games, they used us Brooke. They never wanted to pay any of us! they rang us out like a fucking sponge like a sleazy pimp taking advantage of a poor homeless abused child. Now they wont even let you play on what you created.

    They are just filling in the blanks from what the original pioneers have paved for all these pie eating jibbers!

    I just contacted a PR firm handling a corporate sponsored event to offer day rate for syndicating among sites. We have it covered they said. I responded -where are the digital hub identified where your PR will land and she said, “we don’t pay marketers!” she replied.
    “I see, thank you very much for your time.”

    Dinosaurs will ultimately die,
    I think Willie Mcmillion from Bluebird said it best when referring to the Resorts and the mainstream media:

    ” I liked it better when they hated us! ”

    It never changed Willie they just used us !
    The machine will never rest!, There is never “enough” There is no “away”!

    Bonus material, CORPORATE SCUM OF THE YEAR AWARDS
    George w Bush GET OUT BEFORE THE BLOW UP AWARD
    AIG selfless act of kindness award AKA THE ARAB MONEY FUNNEL AWARD
    CITIBANK whos payin juice now FUCK OFF! MOST GLUTTONEST CORPORATION
    GOLDMAN SACHS paper incinerators these guys are the FUCK TERRORISTS. FUNDING FUTURE WARS NOW AWARD
    WASHINGTON MUTUAL retarded CEO Activity
    ANY OTHER PETROLEUM CONSPIRING FUTURES TRADERS

    Nonetheless, good coffee this morning!

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