May 2018

FEATURED STORY
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SAM's Annual Best and Worst in Marketing 2017-18
A look back at the hits and misses from the past year, as reviewed by our independent and opinionated critics. With all the noise consumers are exposed to everyday, getting them to notice your brand requires some work. This year, marketers took a variety of approaches to get their target audiences to stop and look, listen, and/or read. Some were very successful at this in multiple facets, as evidenced by the number of resorts in this sample that, for different reasons, caught the eyes of more than one of our contributors. Most of the time when more than one “Best and Worst” contributor calls a resort’s marketing out, it’s for the same campaign. This year, a handful of the same r...

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A look back at the hits and misses from the past year, as reviewed by our independent and opinionated critics.

Aspen Snowmass put a great deal of thought, and plenty of investment, into its broadly appealing summer business attractions.

The third installment of the SAM Summit Series leadership mentoring program focuses on managing expenses and, more importantly, how to drive revenue.

For this issue’s Mountain Spy, we asked a guest-service savvy resort staffer—Kimberly Meeker, the regular Spy’s better half—to mine through the last decade of calls and choose a few she thinks represent the best of the best. There are some curveballs, and some straight-up, typical guest inquiries included here, and all were handled really well by the resort staffer answering the phone.

SAM has been encouraging greater coordination of industry data for 35 years. How much has changed?

Tubing can be spectacularly profitable. Night tubing turns the dial to 11.

A little-read study from the EPA suggests resorts can survive this century’s projected global warming—if they achieve greater efficiencies in snowmaking.

Automated operations, to one extent or another, can lead to tremendous efficiency gains.

Meet SAM's newest member, Sarah Wojcik, and the SAMMY winners.


This issue's trailblazers is the family of Dale Walters, founder of Mountain Wire Rope Service.

March snow helped offset a slow start to the season for many resorts, but didn’t erase the early deficit.


An accurate and timely daily snow report is absolutely critical to success, but is still a work in progress for many.


Summer operations risk and exposure nearly equal those of winter.

Load/unload signal lights, an early season snowmaking vehicle, and a simple recordkeeping solution.