Customer Stories
Monarch Mountain is an incredible resort in a unique situation. On the one hand, they have enough natural snow to not need snowmaking and an approachable, family-friendly, independent vibe that’s hard to find in modern skiing. On the other, they’re located in Colorado where competition is stiff against big resorts and big passes.
The team at Monarch knew that their opportunity to compete was found in their ability to deliver a guest experience no other mountain could touch and then converting those positive experiences into loyalty for their resort. They also knew that the secret to both of these things was found in their guest data.
The only problem? They had data, but they didn’t have the tools to unlock the insights hidden inside.
Inntopia Marketing Cloud was their solution. The platform could merge data from all their systems, organize everything in unified guest profiles, and give the whole team access so, together, they could turn data into action.
Two members of that team, Eva Egbert, Director of Brand Experience, and Hannah Grall, Brand Experience Manager, recently presented at Outside Attract about how they turn insights in Inntopia into real improvements for their guests and business. You can watch their full presentation on YouTube, but here are a few of the highlights they covered.
Monarch was looking for ways to increase visitation during slower weekdays. Offering a midweek pass seemed like a solid solution, but they worried about losing revenue to skiers who normally buy a full price pass but now had an option to spend less.
Thankfully, Inntopia’s Pass Migration Report was able to turn years of pass purchase data into a visualization that enabled Eva and Hannah to track season-by-season movement of skiers between their pass products.
“Because of this report, we saw that we weren’t just giving existing passholders a cheaper pass to buy. Instead, our midweek pass had helped us actually gain new season pass holders that really could only do these weekdays or were price sensitive and had been going to our competitors.”
Screenshot of pass migration report with demo data
This view into transactional and behavioral data was a gamechanger, but Eva and her team also wanted something deeper. Something more qualitative.
Knowing attention spans are thin, Eva and Hannah also used Inntopia to spin up a post-visit survey program with a unique approach. Instead of asking a long list of questions, they went all-in on gathering the qualitative data they needed to improve the guest experience.
“Our post-departure surveys are our primary listening mechanism for guests. They’re triggered automatically through our lifecycle messaging in Inntopia and they’re intentionally brief: an experience rating, likelihood to recommend, and an open comment field. That last one is where the gold is.”
This streamlined approach made it easy for guests to respond, while questions written in a friendly, conversational tone encouraged them to share more. The result? More than half of all responses included some of that priceless, personal feedback in the comments field. As these insights rolled in, they used AI to break down trends, spot patterns, and find opportunities to improve.
This was especially helpful in spotting things that long-time skiers may not think twice about.
“Guests, especially families, kept raising concerns about the lack of safety restraint bars on our two of our four fixed grip lifts. No single complaint would have stood out on its own, but because of this survey reporting it became impossible to ignore it. After some initial resistance, we were able to push this project through thanks to this data.”
Eva mentioned this enhancement is already paying off. Not only do families feel safer, they also feel heard and seen which, again, is something that’s much harder for larger resorts to deliver.
Screenshot of List Builder tool.
Those two examples were moments in time, but Monarch relies on Inntopia Marketing Cloud for nearly every campaign they deliver simply because they’re able to build hyper-targeted lists that only include the guests they want to reach for a specific campaign.
“Inntopia’s List Builder lets us slice our guest database by things like behavior, geography, and pass type so we’re not blasting the same message to everyone. A first time buyer will get a very different conversation than our five-year season pass holder.”
Insightful season pass data, actionable survey data, and more accurate targeting for marketing campaigns. Not a bad combination.
It’s that combination that has led Monarch guests to average a 9.07 out of 10 when asked how likely they are to recommend their experience to a friend.
Monarch is a mountain that, at least from my perspective, is doing it right on a bunch of levels. They’re laser focused on the guest experience, they’re investing in tools to deliver on that goal, and they’re highly engaged with the team behind the scenes. At almost every user group we’ve held, someone from Monarch is there, looking for ways to maximize the value they get from the tools they’ve invested in.
We’re proud to work with thoughtful, creative marketers like Eva and Hannah and, even with stiff competition, we can’t help but think that Monarch is putting themselves in a strong position to thrive both now and in the future.
Learn more about Monarch Mountain:
https://skimonarch.com/
Learn more about Inntopia Marketing Cloud:
https://corp.inntopia.com/marketing/
