Trends If you can predict a passholder’s likelihood of renewal, what should you do about it?

Every Tuesday for nearly five years, we dug into the data and shared a unique resort marketing insight. We called it Tuesday Trends. But the focus was on the data, not the action. This post is part of a new series that picks up where those datasets left off. One-by-one, the Inntopia Strategic Team will resurface our favorites and simply ask, “Okay, now what?“

Value of Every Day Skied

One of our favorite datasets from Tuesday Trends had to do with scan counts. Here’s how it worked.

First, we combined number of days skied with renewal rates to quantify our instinct that more days skied led to higher renewal rates. Then, by combining that data set with average season pass prices, we were able to estimate the value of every additional day a skier uses their pass at different usage levels.

Now, the takeaway here is pretty simple:

By monitoring pass usage, you can forecast who is less likely to renew while there’s still time to do something about it.

So, now what?

Here’s what the Strategic Team suggested:

“Create a deal they can only use at the mountain. One of our clients did this with a gift-card for on-mountain dining and it worked great. So maybe it’s a discount for a tune-up in your shop, a deal in a restaurant in your village, a parking perk, a free night midweek in the lodge, or something else entirely. But if the only way to use the deal is to come skiing, the only time it hits your budget is when someone skis one more day and, in turn, becomes more likely to renew. Remember, these are passholders. They love skiing so try not to overthink it. If you give them a good reason to come up, they probably will.”

Patrick Sande
Director of Strategic Services

“Don’t forget your multi-day products like a 6 day or a 10 day pass in this strategy – this isn’t just about full season passholders. Frequency cards make it much easier and relevant to automate communication after each visit or non-visit. Send messaging to anyone who hasn’t used their card at all yet (“We’ve been waiting for you”) or who hasn’t used it in the last 30 days (“We miss you”). Also, don’t forget to have some fun with it and gamify their pass usage by sending automated follow-up and progress report type messaging at key benchmark days throughout their pass usage “Congrats on your second day”, “You’re halfway there.” “Just one day left”. Combine these usage based messages with some of the on-mountain promotions that Patrick mentions above and you’re well on your way to a happy passholder and more importantly a renewed pass.”

Kurt Kinscherf
Director of Customer Insights

“I think the key here is to not get too lost in the weeds. Meaning, instead of focusing on exact scan counts, which aren’t always consistently recorded in the POS, focus on groups. The group I’d start with is anyone who has used their pass roughly 4-6 times or fewer this season. Segment these skiers and push to both your ESP and ad platforms and just start hitting them more often. I think a great example would be your snow report. Here’s a message that’s full of reasons to come to the mountain. Maybe some of these folks are already on that list, but if not, you could start as simply as including this group when the mountain is skiing really well.”

Gregg Blanchard
SVP Strategy

Got a dataset you’d like our thoughts on? Let us know.