Q: Is resort website traffic higher or lower this year versus previous years?

Internet marketing is often simplified to the classic “Traffic” x “Conversion Rate” x “Price” = “Revenue” formula. The more traffic goes in the top, the more revenue comes out bottom. So what about resorts’ visitor volume? Are they seeing more website traffic this year compared to years past? Here’s our answer.

The Goods
For this analysis we used the SlopeFillers database of resort website traffic estimates as provided by Compete. Compete doesn’t give an exact number, but it’s pretty close. The more traffic a site gets, the more accurate their estimate becomes. So, to get as close as possible to the actual number, we only took the top 50 resorts ranked by traffic volume.

From there, we found the average volume of unique visitors each month for the last year and a half. Uniques are, just that, unique visitors. If you went to the same resort site 4 times, you would still only count as 1 unique visitor (the trend was identical for total visits).

Right off the bat, the decline in the graph is fairly clear. To put more exact numbers to the chart, on average, Compete is estimating that traffic has declined 35% this year versus last. From 12,000 monthly uniques in January 2012 down to 8,200 in January2013 and from 3,200 monthly uniques in May 2012 to 1,700 in May 2013.

What This Means
Before hitting the panic button, consider the rise of three things: OTAs, online lift ticket retailers, and social media. As sites like Liftopia and Travelocity grow, visitors that could only get lodging or tickets directly from the resort now have other options.

However, the biggest influence is likely social media. It’s not that skiers aren’t spending time engaging with resorts on the web, it’s that they are simply doing it on domains other than the resort’s primary website (like the resort’s social media accounts). As long as social media continues to grow and resorts continue to give skiers a reason to engage with them there, this trend is likely to continue.

More and Merrier
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