My first thought while reading about this is to wonder about how the local destination marketing groups in Aspen could respond. To me, this is a prime example of a situation where social media would be a means to get the word out that there are still a huge number of available seats and to perhaps even work with United to show how many flight options there still are. With this happening mid-summer, there is plenty of time to put together a campaign and still have it up well before winter bookings start to ramp up. What other sorts of things do you think Aspen could be doing to counter this news?

Photo Credit: Flickr user chuck.miser

Delta and Frontier Flying Away from Aspen is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

• The average American traveller took 4 vacations in the past year and spent more than $3,500 on leisure travel services.
• Travelers are segmented into 4 attitudinal groupings of which I would consider “Familias” and “Touristers” as most likely to take a ski vacation.
• There is a drive to track down the best deal possible (consumer visit on average 20 sites before purchasing), but too much discounting by a travel provider can create cognitive dissonance in consumers and cause them to abandon their purchase.
• Women are the travel decision makers and are more willing to spend extra to make sure the whole family is happy.
• There is a disconnect between passion and practice in most consumers booking “green” travel.
• “Milestone” travel is gaining momentum, in part spurred by the ease of planning these types of occasions via social networking. I found it even more interesting in that there’s great example of a heli-ski trip planned for a 50th birthday in the article.

Finally, even with uncertain economic times, this report states that 16% of all travelers state that they plan to take more overnight trips this year versus 14% that they plan fewer and even better, among affluent travelers (those w/HHI of $125k or more) 20% plan more trips versus only 9% who plan fewer. Certainly good news for us ski resort marketers who depend upon the more affluent for more and more of our vistors.

Travel Weekly 2010 Consumer Trends Report is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

The goal isn’t to gain fans – it is to reward K2’s Facebook friends with an exclusive preview of 2010-11 skis for 2 weeks prior to launching the new website to the public. K2 sells the vast majority of its products through local retail shops so there is no money lost in shutting down the 2009-10 site.

This strategy makes good sense to me and I hope that K2 has it in their plans to further engage with their dedicated fan-base as the 2010-11 winter season approaches and most of us get more into the hard goods buying mode. I’m not sure what it would be, but perhaps some way of letting your friends know what setup it is that you’re thinking of buying, or even a way to show them what you think they should be riding on…

Two last points in regards to this strategy, @elisabethos smartly pointed out that redirecting your entire sites to Facebook does have some SEO implications. And finally, when looking at K2 Skis page stats, their fans have increase significantly, from 24,190 on 7/17 to 31,133 on 7/23 and counting. What do you think about Facebook fan pages and what great (or not so) promotions have you seen winter snow sports companies doing?

K2 Skis and Facebook is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

I took my wife to see Ben Folds with the Utah Symphony. No, that’s not the test, but it was a really good date night. During the concert, I took a couple of videos with my phone and posted them to YouTube. I didn’t tweet that I’d posted them or link them to my Facebook, I merely posted the videos to my YouTube account with descriptions, titles, tags and geo-tags and now within a week the stats are:

The numbers are not “viral”, but still pretty impressive for a couple of clips that were never promoted whatsoever.

Key takeaway, tag and title your YouTube videos according to what your customers are likely to be searching for. And, for your enjoyment here’s one of the clips I shot last weekend:

The Power of Search and YouTube is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Fascinating Research and Analysis of Social Networks is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

This seems readily apparent that there isn’t a lot of income available for lift tickets, particularly looking at the drop in overall travel expenditures from the top 20 percentile to the 2nd highest percentile – it plummets from $3,718 to $1,459, quite a significant change. The other takeaway I had is how small a percentage of overall household expenditure the average American spends on travel:

That percentage is quite tiny at just 3%, and the other thing to make note of is that this is as of 2008, which is a year in which the recessions’ impacts hadn’t been felt much in the travel industry.

What is the takeaway from this report?  In my opinion, it’s that ski resorts should be very cognizant of the available dollars that they are going after with consumers – mainly those in the top 20 percentile of HHI. I’m sure there are opportunities to attract those in the lower quintiles, but the numbers certainly show the best chance is those in the highest, which is something that I’m sure most of us have always been well aware of.

Travel Data from the Bureau of Labor Stats is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Once we look beyond these safety issues of posting vacation details online (which are certainly important to consider) it’s easy to recognize that this is a huge opportunity for resorts to take advantage of these fifty percent plus segment of vacationers that are already sharing their experiences online via social media.

Most experts in the travel industry agree that there are at minimum three phases to a vacation: planning, experience and memories. I’d say that the vacationers that Travelocity surveyed are in the experiential and memories phase and while Travelocity notes several great ways for vacations to share their memories, I know there are a huge number of ways that resorts can help their guests share their experiences while on vacation, like signs asking guests to Tweet or share a photo on Facebook. What other ways can ski resorts leverage this growing segment of vacationers? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Travelocity Survey Shows that Vacationers are Using Social Media to Share their Trips is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Find the image or graphic that you’d want to use for your favicon and upload it to www.favicon.cc which will reduce it to a 16×16 grid which you can then edit as you deem fit, all the while being able to look at a preview. Here’s a sample of my image in the grid:

Once you have your image to where you want it, you can download it as a .ico file and then upload to the main root directory of your web site. Typically a browser will automatically request a favicon for your site if it hasn’t already been downloaded, but if you have an instance like mine, where your blog is the default content for you domain, but its content isn’t in the root directory, you may need to post some code in the header code of your theme. I also had to put the favicon in the theme directory, but that’s it for getting a favicon up for your site – enjoy!

Favicons – Quick and Easy is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Two segments stand out in posting year to year declines in sales – telemark and snowboard. Telemark isn’t a huge surprise as I personally know a number of people who are moving on from telemark to randonee/AT, as well as the fact that this segment is quite small to begin with. Snowboarding on the other hand is something that could be a concern to the winter snow sports industry. The snowboard category is much larger and has been a huge boost in filling the declining numbers of  ’baby boomers’ who ski. The NSAA’s ‘Model for Growth’ is evidence of how the winter resort industry clearly recognizes the challenge of replacing these participants. As it’s an integral component to the future in winter snow sports, I plan on looking into the NSAA’s Model for Growth concept in a future post, but I’d love to know what you think about these retail number, please let me know in the comments!

Chart credit: SIA End of Season Summary Report

Snow Sports Sales – Some Good News is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Snowcial 2011 from Heavenly Mountain on Vimeo.

I hope I can find time to make the hop over to Tahoe as this sounds like an awesome event for those of us in the snow sports industry and there are more than a few people that I’d love to catch up with that I’m sure will be in attendance. Hope to see everyone in January!

Prepare for Another Tahoe Snowcial is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Which Ski Movie has done the Most for the Winter Sports Industry? is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

'Look at this Richard. Just look at it'

I don’t know how I missed this, as it happened about a year and a half ago, but I just recently came across this rather impressive passenger complaint letter to Sir Richard Branson from a passenger on Virgin Airlines. The passenger is in fine form describing the food served on a flight from Mumbai to London:

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Definitely, not a banner moment for any company as this letter was spread far and wide (just not to me) via email, but Virgin did respond smartly, with Sir Richard calling the author of the letter personally and the company even offered the scribe the chance to select their in-flight catering!

Top Customer Complaint Letter and Company Reaction is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

1. The President and GM since 2004, Peter Curtis, announced his retirement after 12 years at PCMR. It was a pleasure to work under “PC” and to listen to his deep knowledge and insight of the ski industry and I wish him endless miles of cruising asphalt on his Harley.
2. On the same day, Jenni Smith, was promoted to fill Peter’s place. I have a great recollection of interviewing with Jenni when I was hired back in 2003, in her position of HR Manager at that time, and how she obviously shared the passion for winter sports that I have, but also the connection that she had with the resort and so many of the employees.

It’s exciting to see changes at the top of the organization at which you work and it’s all the more exciting when you can see that it’s a great situation for all involved. With the many unique programs that PC put into place like the: Signature Runs, MountainZones, Signature Kids Programs, Personal Mountain Tours and MountainZones to name a few he leaves the resort in a great position to move. With Jenni’s wealth of experience at PCMR, in the community and resort industry, I think that she will easily continue and build upon what we currently have. With that, “Best Wishes, PC” and “Congrats Jenni!”

Photo credit: Flickr user quinn.anya

Best Wishes and Congrats is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Personally, I hope it’s a combination of the options. I think the companies  mentioned will come up with some very innovative ways to simplify the travel planning, booking and even experience itself but that there will be plenty of opportunity for ski resorts to create unique and powerful ways to market and sell their products as well. So, by having new ideas injected into the overall online travel market, everyone will benefit. What do you think?!

Online Travel Changes Underway? is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.

Certainly the growing popularity of using social media in the sphere of customer service should help drop this number, but does this not also show the potential for putting live chat prominently on booking sites to try to keep clients from leaving the web and transferring their shopping to a more labor intensive call center? I would argue that the next two reasons would be smoothed via online chat as well in that a company could assure their shoppers that there aren’t better deals available by calling and that customer service is just as good online as it is offline. Certainly this all assumes that a companies customer service is at an even level across all channels. Having dealt with a variety of travel companies I know that this is definitely not the case. Perhaps the solution is to simply concentrate on and ensure the same quality of customer service no matter how a consumer reaches the company, thoughts?

An Argument for “Live Chat” on Travel Sites. is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blog written by Eric Hoffman.