Here it is.

There is a very, very good chance you don’t need to redesign your website this year.

That’s it. 

There are exceptions to the rule including concerns over accessibility or sites that were built when your new social media intern was in kindergarten. But by and large, the site that you have now is going to be just as good as the one you’d spend way too much time and money to build this spring.

Instead of a Redesign

What should you do instead? I though I’d never pretend you’d ask.

If I were you – and, to be clear, I’m not – I’d sit down with the same agency you worked with on your site, put on your thinking caps, and make a list of ten ideas to make your current site better.

A few buckets you could consider might be:

1. Moving people from common landing pages to valuable next steps or from scattered pages to one key page.
2. Improving the performance of existing elements.
3. Trying totally new things you’ve never considered before that don’t require a redesign.

For example.

1. Moving People

Take a look at your top 3-5 landing pages ranked by traffic from organic search.

For each of these pages, decide what an ideal next step would be for someone coming to this page (i.e., “Snow Report >> Check Ticket Prices”) and then rework the content on that page within the limits of the CMS and structure to drive more people to that next step.

Likewise, if you want more people on your blog reading all that content you’ve been working on, build something into every page that moves them there.

2. Improve Element Performance

Next take a look at the sign up rate of your newsletter form. Get a good benchmark for that and brainstorm ways to triple it. No, quintuple it.

Same thing for your snow report page, your lodging overview page, your search, etc.

Then, whether that’s a popover or better wording around the form itself or just implementing better analytics so you have the tools to ask better questions and get better answers next year, just do something and see what happens.

3. Try Something New

I guess this is the point where I should be clear that these three areas are not mutually exclusive. So if your goal is moving random visitors to your blog or blog visitors to your vacation deals page, trying something totally new is often a great way to do that.

Never tried a Hello Bar? Give it a whirl. Always had your newsletter in the footer but have been curious about a pop up? Do it. Curious whether a tweak to your navigation would improve pageviews / visitors? You can probably test that without a redesign. Or maybe look at ways to simply polish the existing design with changes to your CSS files, so you don’t have to touch the HTML at all.

Just try things. Different things. New things. Things you like. Things you don’t like.

One Year from Now

However you break up it up, make a list of ten things that you can build or try or improve and then roll up your sleeves and make those changes. And, as I mentioned, do this with your agency. They know your site better than most and probably already see lots of ideas you could have implemented initially but didn’t have time for.

What you’ll find is that in 1/10th the time of a redesign you’ll improve your site to a level that a full rebuild could never achieve. Because you won’t do it based on being annoyed at the font size of your blog posts, you’ll do it based off data. And, taking a redesign off the table, your agency will remind you that you can fix a lot of stuff without starting from scratch.

Again, sometimes a redesign is the answer. But in my experience, more often than not, you’ll get more bang for your buck (and time) by simply improving on what you already have.

The idea is that taking photos are the reason some people do things.

It’s why they go to one concert rather than another, it’s why they do this hike instead of that hike, it’s why they buy a new outfit instead of wear an old one.

But I also think that doesn’t capture it fully and perhaps there’s a better way to say this that gets at the heart of what some resort marketers I’ve spoken with may be missing.

For a huge portion of your audience, photos aren’t a way to CAPTURE the experience, photos ARE A FUNDAMENTAL PART of the experience.

The desire to share photos is nothing new, the volume and frequency is. We no longer just experience things as they are, we experience them through the lens of how they could look to our peers and family and friends. It’s not something we save to show after the experience, we capture and share photos constantly during the experience. We’re writing captions and mentally framing shots at the same time we’re trying to take it all in for ourselves. Sometimes that balance skews further toward being present, sometimes that balance skews, as I mentioned above, toward the photo being the sole purpose of the experience.

But no matter an individual’s position on that spectrum, it means there are two parts of the experience we need to be optimizing for: the skiing experience and the photo taking and sharing experience. Think about all the ways you work to help guests have a great trip. Then, with that mental list in mind, ask yourself two questions:

• How many of those are about helping the guest with their skiing experience?
• How many of those are helping them have a great photo taking experience?

Let me give you a simple example of what I mean.

A few weeks ago my wife and I were able to hike the Grand Canyon and stay at Phantom Ranch at the bottom along with some of her family. We’d hiked 7 miles, dropped 4,500′ of elevation, and finally settled into our bunkhouse to rest our feet before dinner. While I took a quick shower, my wife and her sister decided to wander up the trail just a quarter mile further. When they got back they excitedly said, “yeah, you should go up there…it’s pretty amazing.”

Then they showed me the picture.

Listen, I am not a big photo taking guy these days, but that picture was enough to get me back on my tired legs to wander up past the employee quarters and along the stream until I saw this.

Five thousand feet of canyon rising above a beautiful meandering stream with the highest ridges catching soft evening light. A better photographer with something more than an old iPhone SE would have gotten a better picture, but even with my amateur skills this is the image that gets people to ask questions like, “So, wait, where is this place? There’s a lottery? How hard is it to get in?”

Yet the only reason I got it was because my wife and her sister randomly wandered to a random part of the trail at a random time.

It’s the same idea for the photo at the top of this post. We’d battled the wind to cook some dinner and decided to wander over for another look before we hurried to get camp set up before dark. The sun was just right and…man…for a guy that loves layers of ridges that fade into golden hour light? It was one of the most magical moments of the trip. One I would have missed if we hadn’t happened to get in that place at that time of day.

In other words, the two most meaningful, impactful photos of the trip were captured through pure chance.

I’d wager that, as it stands, the ability of your guests to capture your best views and most magical moments is still largely left to chance. The seed i want to plant today is that maybe, just maybe, it shouldn’t be. Your guests taking great photos is no longer just a matter of free marketing, it’s part of the experience. And, so being, it can be the difference between a guest having a great experience and just an okay one.

Maybe in the same way you suggest times to arrive and clothing to wear to optimize the skiing experience, you should suggest times to arrive and places to go to also optimize the photo taking experience.

Food for thought.

Brands like Ikon have tried dozens of ways to showcase the variety that is accessible to the folks who buy their pass. Maps, lists, infographics, logo grids, etc. are all tools they’ve turned to in this quest to visualize just how many resorts skiers have access to.

This year, however, Ikon also sprinkled in a fun little analogy to one of their video ads: a remote control with a boatload of buttons.

You can see it in the image at the top or by clicking this link (embedding is disabled for their ad), but the idea is simple and effective. We’re used to having a bunch of buttons on a remote, but that many? That must mean a lot of something is available. That “something”, in this case, is ski resorts. It’s unique, eye-catching, and delivers the message really well. I feel like they could make a whole series of ads based on the same idea of giving everyday things a ton more options (someone opening their garage and seeing 70 cars, a kid waking up Christmas morning to 70 presents, etc.).

I’ve had this on my list to write about for a while, but the other day my son saw the ad and said:

“What the heck? Why does that remote control have so many buttons?”

I explained the intricacies of Ikon branding, resort marketing strategy, and the meaning of life with a response like:

“It’s an ad for a season pass that’s good at lots of resorts, each button represents a resort.”

And his response was simply:

“Wow, that’s a ton.”

Whether his surprise was a failure on my part to educate him on the current state of pass wars or he really was blown away by the idea of a pass good at that many mountains, I’m not sure. But the fact remains that we we’re both impressed with this clever, fun little way to tell this story (and the number of resorts), so either ways it’s mission accomplished.

Great work, Ikon.

Then I wanted to brush up on some math, so I tried Brilliant. Interestingly, I was greeted by the same ideas of carrots and steps and fun and rewards as I’d had in Duolingo. Six months ago my son got me into chess again after a traumatic childhood of rarely winning a game against my bigger, older, and smarter brother. On the Chess.com app, I once again found these same game mechanics in place.

These examples are on the far end of the spectrum for gamification where there are layers and layers of rewards and tiers in place to always keep a balance between hits of dopamine and a carrot always out of reach. There is still power, however, closer to the middle where maybe there’s a single, meaningful layer. It’s just one resorts don’t tap into very often.

Jay Peak, however, just cracked open this playbook again and I really like the setup. Here’s how it works.

First, a series of visual prompts. These cover everything from creating something new (a Jay Peak haiku) to digging through photos from last season to find a “photo that will make people wish they were here.”

Second, a unique, exclusive reward. This is a bit of a lift, even for an engaged resort community like Jay’s, so they’ve given folks a big enough reason to gather and submit all nine of these prompts. In this case, it’s a sassy custom set of Jay skis or a board.

That’s it, two steps. Games don’t have to be complicated.

Now, this little game alone is a great way to get your skiers to reflect on the season and stay engaged and the seasons change, but there’s one asterisk on the CTA at the bottom of this page that should not be overlooked:

*Submissions can be used for Jay Peak social media promotions.

To me, this suggests that this little game is not the point. This game is the means to an end. Jay has a marketing strategy they’re planning that needs specific content to work. That content is stuff that only their guests can create. They know from experience that little games like this are great at driving behavior. So they’ve created a game that helps them gather that content.

I think that’s a great point to end with. Games for the sake of games are fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But games that are designed to also solve a larger need that’s part of a bigger strategy?

That’s even better.

Nice work as always, Jay Peak team.

–

Gregg: Let’s start at the top with a little bit of back story. How long has the growth committee been around and what led to its creation?

Dave: NSAA formed the Growth Committee around 2018, largely in part to feedback from ski area members saying that their biggest challenge was growth. The NSAA president and CEO at the time, Kelly Pawlak, was instrumental in recruiting a variety of ski area and supplier members to the Committee. 

Gregg: Talk a little bit about the initial mission and direction of the group.

Dave: The committee started by defining the issue of growth, measuring the current situation in terms of a number of metrics such as skier visits, a broad variety of demographics, and the number of skiers/snowboarders, all broken down by region of the country.  

The initial goal of the Growth Committee was to have the industry average 60 million skier visits nationally over a 3-year period, an ambitious goal when the ski industry was at a plateau of about 57 million annual skier visits. 

Gregg: I think you mentioned we’ve now hit that initial skier visit goal, what changed for the group at that point?

Dave: Once that goal was achieved, the focus then shifted from skier visits to the number of people who participate in downhill skiing and snowboarding in the United States. Following many rounds of in-depth analysis from RRC, the Growth Committee launched its next goal of 13 million US skiers, an even more ambitious goal; the current estimate from RRC is that there are 10.7 million active downhill skiers and snowboarders in the US. 

Gregg: Zoom out a little bit for me and talk about the higher level mission that’s guiding those more specific goals?  

Dave: The Growth Committee recently established a purpose statement, which is sort of like a mission, which is:

 “The NSAA Growth Committee serves as a think tank and action-oriented group focused on increasing participation in downhill skiing and snowboarding at US ski areas. The Committee uses research, data, and member expertise to establish growth goals, identify barriers and opportunities, and recommend best practices to help ski areas attract, engage, and retain participants while ensuring a sustainable and welcoming future for the sport.”

Creating this purpose statement was an important step in formally putting down on paper what the Growth Committee has been working on over all these years. 

Gregg: How has that mission ebbed and flowed over time as skier visits have grown and measures of growth have also evolved?

Dave: We have discussed many definitions of growth and how the committee can support ski areas in achieving growth. Starting from skier visits, which is an important metric but a limited one, before moving to the number of skiers, was a subtle but meaningful shift for the Growth Committee. The thought was that in order to grow the sport, it’s more than just growing skier days (which is a short-term goal). Rather, increasing the number of people participating is more important in the long-term. The purpose statement above mentions a “sustainable and welcoming future,” which is a more recent clarification of what the Growth Committee is trying to achieve. 

Gregg: That makes good sense. You mentioned at the top that Kelly Pawlak worked really hard to recruit a good variety for the committee.  Who is on the committee?

Dave: The composition of the committee has evolved since the start, but we have many members who have served on the committee since its inception. From the beginning representation from a variety of geographic regions and sizes of ski areas has been critical, and that broad makeup remains to this day. 

Most of the ski area members are from independent resorts or small groups of ski areas, though we have representation from the major multi-mountain companies as well. We also have representatives from suppliers, state associations and affiliated members, including from PSIA-AASI, USCSA, and SOS Outreach.

Gregg; What’s the common thread or perspective within the group?

Dave: The through line is people who are passionate about growth and getting more people out on the hill, whether that is through ski schools, partnerships, marketing, or industry initiatives.  

Gregg: I can confirm that, there’s a fantastic variety of voices. When the committee gets together, what are some of the main action items currently being worked on toward that mission and goal?

Dave: The growth committee has been gathering case studies, best practices, and ideas from various ski areas about strategies and tactics for growth. We have loaded past Conversion Cup applications, NSAA Journal articles, and submissions from Growth Committee ski areas into a database. NSAA has built and trained a bot on the information, and ski areas will be able to use this bot to ask questions and get suggestions to help guide their growth efforts. The bot, which is being called The Growth Lab, will be available later this summer to NSAA members. 

Gregg: Wouldn’t be 2026 without AI, that’s such a great idea. If a resort is reading this and they’ve never heard of the committee, what would be the best next step for them or how can they contribute?

Dave: The committee is always interested in hearing about additional case studies from individual ski areas regarding their growth ideas and programs. What have you tried? What worked? What didn’t work? What did you learn from it? We can incorporate these examples into The Growth Lab so that the database continues to become more robust and valuable. Ski areas can contribute their ideas on a form that NSAA created:

https://form.jotform.com/Bailey_Lloyd/growth-best-practices-form

Gregg: Thanks, Dave, and best of luck to the committee going forward!

Not all, enough that you give those ideas a wide berth. I’ll confess I’ve done it.

I can see this recent post from Belleayre being one of those things. It’s a little bit on the fringes and, so being, I can see some marketers rolling their eyes at it. But here’s the thing: the group that matters is your market. Your skiers. Your audience that actually buys your tickets and passes and books your rooms and lessons.

So when Belleayre wanted to get some extra eyes on both their amazing conditions and their season pass deadlines, they embraced a clickbait-ish sorta tactic with a fake “we we deleted that last post” update.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Belleayre Mountain (@belleayre)

Like the ol’ “Correction:” email, the data is pretty clear that humas tend to latch on to stuff like this. I’ll be honest, when I first saw it I was on the fence, but the more I read the more I felt like their tone and message did a great job of disarming the downsides, poking fu at themselves and the whole game, and tying it all up nicely.

Turns out, their skiers agreed. Instead, I had to scroll past dozens of positive comments like these to find anything that was anything but positive:

AMAZING

Brilliant!! Bravo!!

Belleayre! Is a gen z running this account? Lool

Well played

Excellent strategy, I miss Belleayre!

I have to give it up for this one ya got me

Love this Belleayre!!

Ummm we need an official apology statement for your conditions being too good this season

You have the best social account. You’re only rival is the @nationalparkservice

You should delete this

Brilliant!

Genius! If the State cans you – hit us up!!

Well played

I know the person running this. It has his fingerprints allllll over it

nice! I Belleayre

WELL PLAYED

Belleayre is Brilliant!

I barely ski and I’m dead from this! I may show up & bear the torture of rental boots simply to respect this social flex

Sounds like an early April fools post

Brilliant lol

Haha well played

Got em! Got me

Belleayre is really killing it this season!! #GenSteve

Top tier trolling

This is one of those tactics that can only be use sparingly or it loses it’s power. It’s the kind of window that can close in a matter of days.

But right now, the window is open…and Belleayre took full advantage.

Clever stuff.

On the one hand, these beautiful visuals can be captivating to watch. Resorts have teams of athletes who are incredibly talented, are recorded by other talented teams using high end video tech, and are usually sporting the latest clothing and gear. They always look great, seem to have fresh snow, untouched corduroy, and pristine parks.

On the other hand, that polish can sometimes feel a bit disconnected from the actual experience. Most skiers aren’t semi-pro. Most skiers are on gear they bought 3-4 years ago (if not more). Most skiers are happy chasing leftovers from the last storm in flat light. Most skiers find joy is simpler versions of the skiing experience.

Because the polished version is the standard, we rarely get glimpses of alternatives. But the other day I saw a video from Bridger Bowl that felt…I dunno…different.

And that difference, I quickly realized, was one that made me feeling something that was surprisingly close to what I actually feel on the mountain.

It felt more…real.

Here’s another example from a few days ago of what I mean. Doing your best with flat light, watching from the chair as normal people get stoked from a straight air, a few skiers that can lay down a nice carve, checking out the day’s events as I ski by. That is so much closer to what I love about skiing than the pros in the park spinning double corks and every person on camera somehow being a former GS racer.

I didn’t aspire to go big or chase storms or get on a plane, but I was really surprised by how much these videos bubbled up that desire to spend a perfectly normal day on the mountain.

How many people feel the way I do? Does this convince more people to come to the mountain? Am I crazy? I honestly have no idea, but I love how content like this is both aspirational and attainable. It’s aspirational in the sense that it’s an activity I aspire to doing instead of sitting at my desk tomorrow, not something I aspire to in terms of life goals as a skier or snowboarder. It gives me something aspire to now, not someday.

I think both types of aspiration have their place, but this simple, real, pure view of the mountain?

And the feeling I fet watching it?

I gotta say…there’s something about it that speaks to me in ways the perfectly lit / framed / captured content doesn’t. Nice work, Bridger Bowl.

My brother and I watched this show faithfully, even taping a bunch so we could rewatch them during the warmer months.

What’s interesting about this series is what sticks in my mind as I think back on all those episodes and stories about Utah skiing in the early 90s. Yes, there were a lot of visuals that stand out. But of all the things we reminisce on from those dozens of episodes we enjoyed, one of the common topics is theme song from the Steep Thrills segment.

Those perfectly 90s sounds are so deep in my head and so closely tied to this era of my life, listening to them now I still get chills.

There’s something about our brains and sounds that makes the things we hear sometimes a more powerful tool of nostalgia that what we see or taste or small. I don’t totally understand why, but I’ve seen it play out enough times in my life that it’s become something I’ve started to notice in ways I never expected.

Which is exactly why I love that Steamboat has an Album on Spotify.

Back in the day, Steamboat had a bunch of songs written for their ad campaigns. These spots tried to convince folks to make the trek to this little gem of a town that happened to also have incredible skiing.

Like the Ski Utah TV show, these songs are probably buried deep in the brains of a lot of folks across the country and world. And even if they’re not, nostalgic sounds like these are fun for anyone who happens to hear them and takes us back to a simpler era of skiing and mountain life. So, according to Morgan Bast, they worked with a local band to have them “reinvigorated for the modern era.“

Modern music distribution looks a little different than it did in the 70s, but Steamboat, smartly, went beyond the usual resort marketing channels.

And, thus, we have a Steamboat album on Spotify.

The creativity, the nostalgia, the scrappy ability to tap into a big distribution channel that has only seen the occasional podcast? I love all of it.

I’ve started a lot of projects in my day, but this is the one I’m most proud of.

Over 2,100 posts across nearly 16 years. I can count on one hand the number of weeks I’ve missed posting something new. The result has been millions of pageviews and dozens of countless friendships and incredibly humbling opportunities.

The original plan was to get a marketing job at a resort. Instead, I ended up staying on the software side helping Ryan Solutions and Inntopia market their platforms. This was actually great for SlopeFillers and only strengthened the need to stay on top of trends and study the market, but as the site grew it also widened the divide between who I was – a software marketer – and who readers of this site thought of me as – a resort marketer.

Across all those years as more and more people were thinking of me as a ski resort marketing guy, I was spending 95% of my time as a software marketing guy. It’s what I was studying and practicing, day in and day out. I even built and grew my own software platform on the side. I was getting really good at it, much better than I am a resort marketing.

The problem?

Nobody had any idea.

In marketing terms, I had a branding problem. A problem that I could see biting me in the ol’ rear end down the road if I needed a new job.

Days from Death

I’ve been staring at these two, seemingly opposing ideas for a while, weighing what to do.

During the super busy months after the Outside / Inntopia acquisition, I was literally days away from pulling the plug on SlopeFillers on at least three occasions to make time to better hone my software skills. But even then I had so many people tell me they want SlopeFillers to keep going and, honestly, I did too. I still love and appreciate it as much as ever, but I also felt the need to put more time on this other part of my career.

I went around and around like that for much of 2025.

The, about six months ago, I started to see a way forward. A plan that would allow me to do both, not as separate, siloed ideas, but as part of the same whole, and pave a path for SlopeFillers to continue sustainably.

A Sustainable Future

Here’s the rough idea.

1. Return to the Roots

SlopeFillers started as a blog, but over the years I’ve added value by building other tools and resources. Those are fun, but take a ton of time. Step 1 is returning to my roots and focusing on the content. You’ll see that focus reflected in a simpler nav, better categories, etc. And speaking of content…

2. One Post / Week

Compared to the early days of SlopeFillers, one post feels “less than.” But it’s a better pace for both the busy resort marketers who read my articles and the guy who writes them. So, I’m embracing it. SlopeFillers is now “officially” a weekly dose of resort marketing inspiration.

3. Share Resources

You may notice the same design on my personal website where I’m taking the first steps to elevate my software side. Using the same template across my projects means as I put more time on software-adjactent stuff, my work there will make it back here to keep SlopeFillers up-to-date.

4. Different Parts of One Thing

This one is still a work in progress, but I’m hoping to better weave all of my projects into one story instead of them feeling separate and siloed. The new footer at the bottom of the page is a good example of how I’m trying to tie everything together as different parts of my one story.

5. Embrace It

More than anything, I just want to better embrace who I am. I love resort marketing, I know a boatload about resort marketing, I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about resort marketing, but I’m not a resort marketer. That’s you. I’m a software marketer and I’ve been one for a long time, but that doesn’t change my commitment to sharing all the amazing work you resort marketers do.

Onward (and Thank You)

I hate pulling time away from resort marketing ideas and inspiration, but I felt like this was a good moment to provide a quick update as I roll out these changes.

I’m more excited about SlopeFillers than I’ve been in a while, I feel more clarity about my career and personal brand than I’ve felt in a decade, and I’m excited to better align these two parts of who I am in a way that is more sustainable and aligned to the direction I want and need to go.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck around for so many years. It means more than I can say.

Here’s to many more.

—

P.S. – One indisputable fact that SlopeFillers has taught me is this:

You can get really good at something by consistently studying it and writing about it.

So, I’m doing the same for software marketing with a category on my personal site called Smaller SaaS. Interestingly, a few of the posts I have drafted pull lessons from resort marketing. Turns out, good marketing ideas are pretty flexible. If SaaS marketing is at all intriguing to you, feel free to follow along there as well.

Eagle Point is a fantastic resort located in Utah’s central mountains roughly halfway between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Once known as Elk Meadows before closing, the mountain reopened in 2010 with the current name and new ownership.

What didn’t change, however, is likely the resort’s biggest challenge: it’s location. The closest town is Beaver, population 3,500. Utah’s love going south in winter, but they typically go for warmer weather in places like St George. So how do you get folks to come to a place like this at a time when the snow is already melting in their backyards?

The answer, according to owner Shane Gadbaw is to give the skiing away for free. Here’s how Shane explained it when I checked in with him a number of years ago:

“By owning or controlling all of the restaurants, services and rental properties around the resort and maintaining low overhead, we have the same advantage as the Vegas resorts. We can give lift access away for free yet still achieve a sufficient yield from our guests on food & beverage sales, rentals, instruction, retail or condo stays. More importantly, the free admission spurs the first‐time visit. That is all we need because the vast majority of new guests fall in love with the place and go home to tell their friends and family.”

The context of that quote was giving California residents free skiing. Last year it was anyone with a pass to another mountain who got free skiing.

This year? It’s college students.

Notice how it’s the demographics vary each year. By rotating through different key segments within their market, they can balance a relevant, niche offer that doesn’t overwhelm their capacity while also building awareness across the whole over time.

The more I’ve seen Eagle Point run this type of campaign, the more I like it partly because of that same balance between short and long term needs. By knowing the numbers and being willing to treat excess capacity as a marketing resource, the resort is able to grab big, flashy headlines like this year after year which not only generate meaningful revenue in the short term, but also slowly build their name in a market that is dominated by big, legacy brands that have the advantage of big populations and storied histories.

When you’re the underdog, you have to be scrappy, but you also have to be smart so your strategy is as sustainable as it is creative.

Eagle Point plays those cards just as well as any resort I’ve seen.