If I came last year and the year before, how likely am I to come next year?

What is the value of traditions? If I came to your resort last year, but didn’t come the year before, how likely am I to return compared to someone that did make the trip both years? What about someone who comes 3 years in a row? Or 4, 5, or 6? That’s the question we had, so we answered it.

The Goods
To find an answer we took reservation data (excluding owners) for 8 different resorts for the last 7 years. From these guests, we found those that had streaks leading up to various season and the number of those guests who then came the following year. Here’s how it looked:

If someone came to your resort last season, but didn’t the winter before, there’s about a 12% chance they’ll return next year. If they’ve come two years in a row (but not the year prior), there’s a 34% chance they’ll return the next year. After 3 consecutive years, the likelihood they’ll return is just under 50%. After 6 years, there’s more than a 75% chance they’ll return the following season.

What This Means
The hardest hurdle in this series seems to be the first: getting guests with a streak of only 1 year to turn it into 2. This is also, by far, the largest group. Depending on your current strategy, this could be either an opportunity or a challenge.

However, if one of the resorts in this sample increased the return rate of this season’s 1-year guests from 12% to 15%, they would have 100 extra reservations next winter made by people that are now 3x as likely to make it 3 in a row than they were to make it 2.

Next Week…
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