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Indications that the economy is improving may well be established by the time the snow falls, but resorts aren’t counting on a recovery to spur consumers. They’re rolling out stimulus plans of their own, spicing up destination packages with free extra nights and value-adds, offering low-price guarantees and, for locals, slashing season pass prices to as little as one-third of previous rates.

Collectively, ski areas and their partners, including hotels, restaurants and retailers, are looking for any way possible to take the perceived sting out of a ski trip. They are announcing early-season deals on their websites, but are preparing for sustained campaigns through blast-o-gram specials on e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. Even holidays—usually taken for granted—are being included in some of the deals.

Ironically, just as resorts pull out all the stops in the deal-making game, a few signs suggested the travel business was beginning to recover. Two questions destination marketers might soon face are: Did they give away too much, too soon? And have they abandoned profitable and loyal destination markets for a short-term gain from fickle regional and local markets?

Ralf Garrison, a Denver-based market analyst whose Mountain Travel Research Program (MTRiP) tracks advance bookings for 17 major resort destinations, mostly in the West, thinks both answers could be yes. True, MTRiP’s August data projected occupancy for the subsequent six months down 19.5 percent, with rates down 14 percent, over the previous year. But—and this is a big “but”—the pace of reservations for August was actually up 2.1 percent. Whether that was the beginning of a trend or just an anomaly won’t be known until November, he says. “Consumers are engaging a little more than they did last year, and maybe their attention span on crisis behavior has run its course,” says Garrison.

His advice to conflicted resort marketers: “Be clearer than ever on goals and objectives, be mindful of real data that is serving as your compass, and be as nimble as you can with strategies and tactics.” The dilemma, he acknowledges, is that resorts have little choice but to use last year’s experience to plan ahead, even though the travel industry is in a transition. No one knows what the “new normal” will be.

Even so, Garrison believes resorts should maintain their national and international marketing campaigns. Losing momentum and brand awareness in long-established markets could haunt ski areas for years, he says, because building those customer relationships required long-term investment and continuity. Indications are that the recession has already bottomed out in much of Europe and Asia, well ahead of the U.S., and consumers abroad may be ready to travel overseas again.


LET’S MAKE A DEAL
But few resorts were counting on a big turnaround as SAM went to press. Many were just announcing their marketing strategies; here are the trends we saw emerging for the 2009-2010 season:

• Destination resorts that can benefit from metropolitan drive-up markets are reallocating advertising dollars, PR and marketing efforts to go after the local, low-hanging fruit. They are spending less on national and international business.

• Airlines may offer discount fares through the winter, but resorts that rely largely on destination traffic aren’t counting on it. Many are reducing ground package prices to get below the $100-per-night threshold for rooms.

• Since advance bookings are down, resorts are bracing for a rash of spur-of-the-moment travel and retooling their organizations to encourage and respond to it. They are softening advance reservation terms, and offering money-back guarantees if prices drop later.

• Lift-ticket pricing is being sliced and diced, sometimes wrapped into bargain lodging packages that may also include freebie skiing for kids. There are fewer holiday blackout periods.

• Season passes costing more than $1,000 are becoming less common. The new range for many resorts is in the neighborhood of $300 to $600, sometimes much less for children. Some resorts are holding the line, believing passes to be their last bastion of guaranteed income.

• With incidental spending down last season, resorts are trying new tactics to revive ancillary income streams. Meal deals, dine-around cards, activity cards and twofers are in vogue. The web and social media will be used to promote blue-plate specials and deals du jour.


ACROSS THE USA
In California, where the recession has hit harder than in most places and the vernacular of “staycations” has been a dagger in the heart of the travel industry, resorts are in a Wal-Mart mode of price-cutting. “Clearly people are looking to not go quite as far and not spend quite as much as they have in the past,” says Carl Ribaudo, who heads up the Ski Lake Tahoe marketing consortium. “We haven’t abandoned the destination markets, but we’re putting more focus on regional markets.” No matter how things shake out in the short term, Ribaudo senses a sea-change in consumer habits. “The new mindset revolves around ‘do I need it and do I want it?’ So we could be seeing a permanent shift in spending patterns. Fortunately, skiing and boarding are passion-driven, and while people may cut back they won’t cut out,” he says.

Ski Lake Tahoe, which represents seven ski areas, including Heavenly and Squaw Valley, is offering ski-and-stay packages for as low as $59 per night, per person, using casino hotels and other participating lodging partners. There’s also a Ski Lake Tahoe Six-Pack promotion with six days of skiing for $269. “We’re positioning our destination as iconic and price competitive, with affordable luxury,” he adds.

Ski Utah, one of Tahoe’s close competitors, is no slouch, either, when it comes to marketing accessible and reasonably-priced ski packages. This year the association is launching a national “White Sale” ad campaign, backed by a separate website that will link to the best offerings and deals at its 13 alpine resorts. “We’ve also added a new function called My Vacation, which people can use to store deals in an online shopping cart,” says Jessica Kunzer, Ski Utah’s director of communications.

Parallel to this is an effort from the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau, which puts weekends on sale, using downtown business hotels and motels as bases for trips into the canyons. Scott Beck, president and CEO of the bureau, says surveys have shown that more than half of inbound destination skiers to the Wasatch range stay in town. Rates at premium properties run $179 to $229 midweek, when the business crowd holds forth, but drop to $79 to $129 per room on weekends, sometimes as early as Thursday nights, he says. Further, a Ski Salt Lake Super Pass, redeemable at Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude, can start at $59 a day per person.

Beck says that the soft economy combined with Salt Lake’s value proposition—weekends with no blackout dates—has “strengthened our marketing position with the ski resorts. We’re seeing more willingness to partner with us, and not just as a way to fill excess capacity on the weekends.”

He believes that travel decisions to Utah this year will be more on the order of seven to 10 days in advance. With that prospect, advance purchase cutoff dates are being extended to mid-December and even mid-January, says Beck.

In Colorado, the Vail Resorts (VR) group is firing up its pricing strategy on two fronts: continuing its unlimited, unrestricted Epic Season Pass that includes all five resorts plus Arapahoe Basin for $599, and launching meal and snowsport-school deals to offset the decline in ancillary per-capita spending. A “Lunch for Less” daily value meal will be $9.95 for all five resorts and includes entrée, side dish and beverage. An advance-purchase Mountain Meal Card will provide an extra 20 percent dollar value. And the company has launched a “best in class” hamburger called the Epic Mountain Burger—a gourmet double-burger that it hopes skiers will relish at the company’s five resorts.

VR’s latest school deal is a guided non-lesson lesson, in which instructors introduce their charges to the day’s best snow and terrain and provide technique tips along the way. The price for the all-day (six hour) program is about $125, about the same as for a group lesson. But class size is smaller, one to five per instructor, and it’s aimed at providing maximum vertical, not verbiage. VR hopes this will bring back advanced and expert skiers and riders, most of whom have left snowsport school behind.

On the Eastern seaboard, the Vermont Ski Areas Association is compiling bargains from its member resorts and posting them on a designated website page, where consumers can get updates before and during the season. “The ski areas have worked to have not just aggressive deals, but also creative ones,” says Jen Butson, public affairs director. “Season pass reductions are ranging upwards of 20 percent, but we’re also seeing things like free lunches, ride share incentives, multi-day packages, retailer discounts, rewards programs, Twitter and Facebook friend deals, and more value cards,” she says. Many of these, she adds, will be available during holiday periods.


OLYMPIAN EFFORT
At Whistler-Blackcomb, which is basking in pre-Olympics euphoria, the resort is making much of its C$1,099 early-bird season pass—“the lowest price in a decade,” in the words of a press release. While that price is still higher than those at many U.S. resorts, it represents a savings of C$430 over last year, in a country that has been less impacted by the worldwide recession. Whistler is also pushing early booking. For instance, travelers who book by Nov. 15 can get a four-night, three-day ski package for as little as US$308 at The Fairmont Chateau Whistler.

The Olympic Curse, also known as the Olympic Aversion, has often scared away destination skiers from host venues for most of the season, sometimes resulting in attendance and revenue falloff as steep as 30 percent. Some competitors have been suggesting Whistler regulars should avoid the resort during the Olympics. To combat this, the message from British Columbia/Vancouver tourism entities is that slopes at Whistler/Blackcomb will be 90 percent accessible even during the Winter Games. However, transportation restrictions on the Sea-to-Sky Highway (buses only for the Olympics) could well affect destination business. Resort marketers are counting on established and successful spring events—from March Winter Pride to the April World Ski and Snowboard Festival—to keep regulars coming after the Games.

It may turn out that a significant rise in consumer confidence is just a few months away, and that this year’s Draconian price reductions will be looked upon next year as unnecessary and possibly game-changing on a long-term basis. Or it may be seen that the resorts did what they had to do to stimulate business. Clearly, the strategies for meeting revenue objectives are all over the board.


GRAB BAG OF RESORT DEALS

• Snowbird, Utah: Rooms at the upscale Cliff Lodge are as low as $79 a night, based on availability, compared to $200 rack. Lodge/lift packages start at $99 per person, double occupancy.

• Jackson Hole, Wyo.: Fourth person gets free airline ticket with a five-night lodging, three-day lift package for four, from Jackson Hole Central Reservations.

• Killington, Vt.: Deal Grabbers lift tickets as little as $35.

• Stratton, Vt.: Guaranteed price protection for early booking, no penalty for canceling or changing dates up to 14 days from arrival. 30 percent off midweek and 20 percent off weekend stays, booked by Oct. 30.

• Squaw Valley, Calif.: Adult season passes slashed $1,000 over 2008 rates. Lowest early-purchase pass: $369.

• Heavenly, Calif.: Season pass rolled back to 2007 levels: $369.

• Mammoth Mountain, Calif.: Early booking by Nov. 11 gets lodging at up to 40 percent off regular pricing.

• Summit Ski Areas, Colo.: Summit Pass at $399 gives unrestricted, unlimited access season-long to Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin.

• Sun Valley, Idaho: Stay at the Sun Valley Lodge or Sun Valley Inn between Jan. 3 and March 25 (some blackouts) and pay $94.50 per person, double, including daily lift ticket.

• Big Sky, Mont.: “Biggest Skiing in America” package, book three nights and get fourth night and fourth day of skiing free. Deal of the Day discounts on meals, spa and optional activities.