Saturday, August 31, 2013

A Harmless Sales Message

Every now and then, it's possible that I may include a harmless sales message in this blog.  My goal with these sales messages is to not to give you "the pitch" but to provide some of our insight as management on how we arrive at some of these decisions and offer our view in sales & marketing.

We kickoff our Fall Pass Sale this Sunday and we are excited to announce that there is a new pass lineup with new prices and even a new option to purchase your pass.  You will notice we have released a brand new pass option called the Millennial Pass.  This pass replaces the College Pass.  The College Pass was popular for many years but sales were beginning to flatten in recent years and we wanted to expand this type of pass to a larger audience.  Millennials are also known as "Gen Y" and usually regarded as anyone in their 20's.  So, we set the age range for the Millennial Pass for anyone age 19-29.

Our goal this fall was to make the price of the fall passes as attractive as possible this without compromising what people paid for passes back in the spring.  We think that $249 for an unlimited season pass is a heck of a deal.  We also think our prices for the Family Pass and Fill-a-Quad passes are also pretty impressive.  In case you haven't already noticed, we value our guests who make the decision to buy a pass or like we call it, become a Member.  That's why we also try to provide some quality member benefits like the member/guest tickets, rentals, discounts on lessons and more.  We are also happy to announce that our members will receive the same $20 discount on lift tickets at Lutsen this year.  We are working on finalizing Welch Village member benefits with at least one other western resort as well. 

New this season, we have added a Payment Plan option when making your season pass purchase.  Simply click the Payment Plan option, and you will see what your down payment would be for your pass and a payment schedule to pay off the rest of your pass.  Our hope was to make a season pass possible for even more of our guests.   

We hope you and your family will consider a membership at Welch Village this winter.  If you have already purchased a membership, I offer a sincere Thank you!  School starts this week, which means snowmaking isn't far off.  We will get those guns fired up for you as soon as possible because even our management staff is getting the itch to make some turns!   


Wednesday, August 14, 2013

MSAA Tradeshow

Every summer, the first week of August, a few of us attend the Midwest Ski Areas Association Summer Trade show and Conference.  This year's event was held last week at Alpine Valley Resort in Wisconsin near Milwaukee.  This event is a great source of information and networking for those in the ski and snowboard industry.  It's conferences like this where we receive a lot of our information regarding legislative and safety issues affecting our industry as well information from vendors on the latest equipment & supplies.  We try to spread out of our small team of attendees at this conference every year to attend as many of informational sessions as possible.  The topics of these sessions include things like marketing trends, legal issues, chairlift safety and overall guest safety, snow making, grooming, rental operations, terrain parks, ski school and much more.  Above all, these events are great networking events for people like me where we get to talk with other ski area operators from around the Midwest, hear about their season last year, what worked, what didn't work, what new things are planned for this year and so on.  We are all genuine in attempting to learn from each other because we all have a vested interest in growing the sport of skiing and snowboarding.     Below are some photos from the conference so all of you can see a glimpse of what it's like to attend a conference like this.  Pay special attention to the photo of the big red Piston Bully Winch Cat groomer because you will see that exact machine grooming the slopes of Welch this year!