..and it's Not Money, Snow, Terrain, Amenities or Location
Why are more people dragging their gear and money bags to the lesser-known and often "smaller" mountains?
The big corporate marketing mavens are scratching their heads. They sprawl the big marketing channels & crush the little guys into the invisible periphery. They burn megabucks to suck maximum air and ad space out of traditional media, leaving the little guys choking on their financial fumes.
Yet they still haven't managed to throttle the life out of the expanding smaller resorts, or even stop the development of new ones. Skier/rider business is being heavily diluted across a growing number of smaller mountain destinations and big mountains are feeling it.
So, how does Big White BC manage to charge $65 CAD per adult lift ticket & sell multimillion dollar homes with only a tiny fraction of the terrain, amenities, lifts and marketing as Whistler, where a single day ticket costs only $8 per day more? ($73 CAD).
It's All about the One Single Thing that Money Can't Buy
The hearts of the locals.
The passion and positive energy of the local community are among the strongest factors in a mountain's success or failure. The health of the local heartbeat and how closely, directly and frequently guests experience it causes mountains to rise and fall...and even rise again.
It is so powerful that it can make up for less amenities, terrain and vertical, thus causing people to pay as much for a vacation in a smaller resort, as they would for a big one.
Everything stems from local passion. It's magical and it unites people to make the impossible, a reality. When you love where you are, it oozes out of you. It can't help but splatter on guests and infect them too.
Before we get slammed with comments, I am NOT saying that Whistler locals are passionless about their resort. Our company is obsessed about putting guests directly in front of Whistler locals because that is where the magic of the place really lies. It is the secret behind our success in that resort.
My point is merely that Big White, Sun Peaks and other resorts like them, are somehow making up for a lot less of everything that the industry traditionally sees as being important, with lots of something else.
What is that something else?
Obviously I think that how the local community reflects the resort onto guests plays a vital role.
Locals will infuse more destination passion into guests than marketing or terrain ever will, especially when they have more than minimum wage-paying jobs at stake. Locals can be a resort's best marketing asset.
No amount of marketing, strategy, intellect or money matches the impact of a grinning local personally welcoming and thanking a guest for visiting their resort, or excitedly sharing some local secrets. It makes a mediocre cup of coffee, great. It makes dull days brighter. It vaporizes long travel times from memories. It makes a slow lift faster, especially when the seat was slid under your booty by a smiling and chatty liftie.
When local destination zeal and pride is at work, it beams its welcoming glow onto guests in a way that makes them feel like they belong, they are wanted and that the resort is "home".
Only humans can make a destination feel like "home". People will pay anything to get "home".
In a world where 10,000+ daily marketing messages & images remind us of our inadequacies, people crave to be where they feel like they belong, are wanted and valued.
Guests will pilgrim back to "home" with their families and wallets every year.
The small resort secret is that they are creating the perception of "home" more successfully than the large ones are.
When Things Go Bad & Why
In contrast, when the community's passion deflates, the mountain shrinks. The economy stagnates and guests drift elsewhere.
How does it happen?
The more that mountain operators/owners remove locals from the spoils of success or from the success-building effort itself, the weaker the local heartbeat becomes. The further removed the local community becomes from its guests, the fainter the pulse.
When local hearts break, they don't care as much as they used to. Guests notice it and they go where they feel more welcome and wanted.
Why?
The powerful human connection crafted by locals that binds guests to a resort by their homing heartstings is missing.
Without that connection, guests remain detached strangers in the destination. The decision to visit again simply comes down to dollars and cents. The product becomes commoditized and the mountain must compete on price alone...and someone will always be cheaper.
So begins the downward spiral.
Hard Questions for Mountain Operators & Owners
If you answer YES to too many of the following questions, you could be heading for heartbreak hotel and stagnant business results.
You may be riding the the money wave today, but it's inevitable that you'll be beached unless that wave is powered by locals. It't the natural ebb and flow of destination development.
Gutsy enough to consider the questions?
- Are you cutting locally-owned, independent businesses out of the bounty?
- Are you trying to control/buy everything under the mantra of developing a superior "experience"?
- Do you have an outsourced call centre in a place other than your mountain community?
- Is "controlling" retail space in your destination a priority?
- Are you trying to "aggregate" or "control" the input channels?
- Are you trying to "consolidate" guest services or lodging suppliers?
- Is real estate a huge part of your business plan?
- Are you plowing paradise and re-creating urban views that guests are trying to flee from?
- Is most of your marketing price-based?
- Do developers play a big role in your decision making?
- Does your staff need some training on Gratitude Attitude? (more about AlluraDirect.com's famous phrase in future posts)
- Are franchised or nationally/internationally-based businesses occupying an increasing amount of retail space?
More than 2-3 YES answers?
Stop spending more money on marketing (you are wasting it) and start working on how to build your product, beginning with renewing the energy, opportunities and vision for the local community. Create ways for them to share in the success and they will join in the dream to make it bigger than you thought possible. They are your best marketing weapons in getting and keeping customers-FOR LIFE.
Truth or Make-Up: Who the Heck are We to Tell Big Business Anything?
We've monitored, analyzed & pondered the sine waves that many resorts ride during the last 15 years. After battling giants, making lots of mistakes, doing countless destination site visits, havng thousands of conversations with our site users, engaging in amazing online chairlift chats with mountain visitors, and even owning real estate in different mountain communities, we have concluded that the only uniform factor that makes or breaks a place across the board, is it's heart.
With it, mountains can ride out bad snow years, geopolitical instability & poor economic conditions knowing that their loyal customer base will flock back with even more new customers and forgive what cannot be controlled.
Without it, too much will be spent on marketing to attract new business, too little will be spent on product development and frothy real estate markets that cannot be sustained by visitation numbers will become the main business focus.
Money alone (and all that it can buy), terrain and amenities aren't the answer, otherwise little resorts wouldn't be kicking so much big butt.
And they are kicking some butt.
Next time: unslumping oneself is not much fun-but it can be done. If Ian ever let's me post again, I'll dare to suggest some mountain slump remedies that work for our own company on a smaller scale.
