Trends Q: Of all your beginners two years ago, how many will be passholders in 2013/14?

As we brainstorm topics for the Stash, we often find ourselves with a question that ends the same way. Whether we’re discussing lodging guests or passholders, over and over again we ask, “where are they now?” While the question sounds simple, finding an answer across multiple resort product types can be tricky. Even so, we’re making a first attempt today by asking, “of all the beginner lessons from two years ago, how many are passholders now?” Take a look.

The Goods
For this analysis we used data from a half-dozen resorts that had a designated beginner lesson type in their database. To answer our question, we created a group of people that took a beginner lesson and called the season they did so Year A. Then, we found how many of them were season passholders the following year (Year B) and the year after that (Year C).

In other words if someone took a beginner lesson in 2008/09, that would be year A. Year B would be 2009/10 with 2011/12 as Year C. We also excluded owners, employees, and non-locals from this sample to really focus in the lesson-takers that would be ideal candidates to become passholders.

From our sample, resorts saw an average of 8.9% of their beginner lesson takers as passholders the following year. The year after that, about 6.2% of them would show up as passholders.

In other words, for every 100 beginner lessons your resort gave in 2011/12, we’d expect about 6 of them to buy a season pass for 2013/14.

What This Means
While the challenges of cross-resort analyses kept our analysis fairly simple, the takeaways are no less valuable that a complex query. Moving beginners down some sort of pipeline where they eventually become loyal participants in the sport is a key to the growth of skiing. If we can’t get them to come back, and then come back again and again, we’ll be in tough shape.

Use this initial analysis as a starting point for your own analysis. How do you compare? Then, what can you do to turn 8.9% into 12% and 6.2% into 9%? While it’s always been the case to some degree, the answer to that question will be an especially valuable piece of knowledge to have going forward.

Roses Are Red…
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