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As a marketer I am completely spoiled by the wealth of talent we have at Inntopia. The people supporting our Commerce and Marketing Cloud users have decades of experience in the industry, have helped dozens of resorts with their strategy, and are a big reason why our clients are so successful.
As we look forward to another winter season I asked a six of these in-house experts to share what trends and strategies are top of mind for them.
As email sending ramps up with opening day it’s common to see deliverability issues pop up. There is also a larger shift happening in email deliverability this year as inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo are stricter about email security and are fine-tuning their algorithms to detect if an email is wanted and should go in the inbox, or if it’s not and it should go to spam. It’s a good time to make sure your email program is healthy and following best practices to stay in the inbox.
Remember the basics as we head into the season. First, send relevant content to people who want to receive email from you. How do you know they want to hear from you and you’re sending good content? They‘ve opted in to your emails, they open, click, purchase, and browse your website. Second, have a re-engagement email and social media campaign for people who have not purchased, opened, or clicked an email in a year or more. Third, monitor trends in open rate, click rate, bounce rate, and unsubscribes to detect potential deliverability issues early. It’s much easier to fix the earlier issues that are detected.
Kristin Connors and Brian Elliott chat with an attendee during a recent Inntopia user group.
As resort marketers, we spend much of our time and money working to get guests to our resort. Understanding the experience they have at the resort can be a huge opportunity to learn more about our guests and what drives them to come. This winter season, consider automating surveys to guests at key moments. Whether that be after their most recent visit, when they hit a pass scan milestone, or even prior to their arrival; a well-timed survey can provide you with tremendous insight.
Additionally, Ask questions beyond what their resort experience was like. If you know Pass holders prefer to hear from you via email or SMS, that’s valuable. If we know the majority of our day guests consider themselves intermediate skiers or snowboarders, that’s valuable. If we know our lodging guests start thinking about planning their stay 30 days before their arrival, you guessed it, that’s valuable.
And finally, don’t be afraid to survey. I hear hesitation about surveying too much – in fairness we all are getting constant survey requests these days. However, we’re providing really unique and fun experiences to our guests. Experiences they’ve invested in and are more likely to want to share feedback. Feedback that can be incredibly valuable to both the marketing department and the resort as a whole.
I think that brand loyalty will continue to be a major theme for resorts and other destination markets. Consumers have the final say to where they are directing their discretionary spend and we know that ski resorts compete with other vacation-types of recreational expenses for which consumers are budgeting. Resort brands must continue to provide excellent value and a winning experience, but also keep their guests returning year after year or be faced with acquiring new guests or wooing guests from their competitors.
Either way, loyalty plays a large part in resorts continuing to have success with things like season passes and repeat visitation to their owned and operated properties. It’s not always about price but the feeling that guests and their families get when they think about their experience and resort brands! I think the best strategy I have seen is creating those “feel good” moments and putting the guest experience at the center of their loyalty strategy.
Lindsay Haller meeting with a client during a recent Inntopia user group conference.
After snow, economic conditions are the second most important factor in how a ski season performs. This year is no different and consumers remain cautious as we head into the 2024/25 season. Even with record-breaking financial markets (and therefore savings / 401k accounts), and almost bulletproof employment and wage data, the inflation hole dug over the last two and a half years is going to impact room rates for the foreseeable future.
We’re now in the 18th month of price sensitive consumers; any gains in ADR over that time have directly correlated to declines or softening in occupancy, not just year-over-year, but month-over-month. There’s no expectation that that will ease during the winter 2024/25 season, so it will be up to suppliers to manage revenue in such a way as to find the balance between teetering ADR gains and soft occupancy to drive revenue, perhaps with value-add propositions where rate has no room to move.
Also, presidential elections traditionally impact booking in the weeks leading up to election day, and this year is no different. But there’s no evidence in any of our data back to 2000 that there are any lingering effects, irrespective of outcome, and only the long-term impact of an administration’s policies – usually beginning 24 months AFTER the election – will truly impact consumerism.
As we continue to see challenges across the industry, now is the time to lean into email marketing automation. We are encouraging our partners to start thinking about what new layers (think layers of an onion) of automation or steps in the customer journey can be added to your email automation marketing strategy? Maybe it’s a booking anniversary campaign to drive revenue, dynamic content that targets specific needs/interests of your guests, or even adding an additional pre-arrival message targeted for long-lead bookings to improve engagement. Whatever your goal, email automation is an efficient and reliable marketing channel to leverage in these uncertain and challenging times.
Kurt Kinscherf leading a discussion during a recent Inntopia user group conference.
No conversation about the evolution of tech would be complete without a quick word on AI and LLM’s such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc. While there is a high likelihood that that this technology directly disrupts the broader travel tech stack in the next few years, I’ve been much more interested in how it helps all of us marketers just simply get sh*t done.
The three main areas that I’ve been finding recent success utilizing AI are search (using AI and not just Google to efficiently research a topic), summarization (using AI to summarize meeting notes and recap action items), and simply starting (overcoming blank page syndrome by using AI to give yourself a starting point for a project). Is AI coming to take all of our jobs? Not likely any time soon, but those who know how best to harness the power of these tools are likely to outpace those that do not. Make sure you’re on the right side of that equation.
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