Q: Which states plan their winter resort vacations furthest in advance?

Knowing how far in advance your guests may book their vacations can be a powerful ally in the quest to pinpoint the timing piece of the marketing equation. A few weeks ago we looked at the average length-of-stay for both eastern and western resorts, broken down by state. Today, we’re doing much the same but focusing the analysis on lead time instead of LOS. Take a look.

The Goods
Similar to state LOS analysis, we took data from 23 ski resorts – 13 from the West, 10 from the East – to find the average winter-guest lead time based on the state they were coming from. Again, we did not include guests from the same state as the resort to keep to focus on destination travelers.

This time, we mapped the data a little bit differently. First, we didn’t seperate guests by the side of the country on which their destination was located. We wanted to see, apples to apples, which states had the travelers that planned that earliest. The second thing was we removed the key. There are many ways to quantify groups of lead times – median, average, etc. – each with a different goal. But we wanted to focus on how states compare to one another so we didn’t put exact figures on the scale. Light = shorter lead times. Dark = longer.

Right off the bat there is a trend that’s easy to spot: the warmer and farther you get from big totals of natural snow, the further in advance you will typically plan your vacation. The center of this heat/snowless combo seems to be centered in Louisiana with a couple groups with the exact opposite scenario in the Rockies as well as New England.

What This Means
There are many motivators that come into play when planning a vacation, but, as you might expect, as you get into warmer climes and thus further and further from plentiful snowfall, the planning time goes up and up.

Timing can be everything with marketing. Too soon or too late and your message simply won’t be relevant. Timing also varies greatly by resort. So, as we often say, use this chart as a jumping off point, appending your own data and letting these trends fill in the gaps where your database may not have enough numbers to give an accurate picture. Then, use your metric of choice to make an even more intelligent decision next time you plan the timing of a national campaign.

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