Last thursday our sophmore Ski Resort Practicum class took a ride to Sunday River to check out the New England Winter Sports Summit. We were given the oppertunity to meet al kinds of people from inside of our industry. This was something none of us have ever been able to do before so we took advantage and began to work the room and talk to all the people that we could. The beginning of our day was spent in the ballroom where the tradeshow was going on. Various Ski and Snowsport industry companies set up booths to showcase their product and inform about waht they do. after the morning hours of the tradeshow, the rest of the day was broken into different workshops for us to listen in on. The first Seminar that i sat in on was the NSAA season update. Here i learned that in most regions last season the industry gained skiervisits over previous years. We are over the 10 year average of skier visits and this past season we were up 1.3% than the season before. The Speaker also gave a lot of tips on what works as far as discount deals and what doesnt work so well. He informed us how much resorts are losing on their senior discounts as they are actually a bigger part of the market than we would ever think. The group was given a lot of information on our target market and how we will market to them. A lot of graphs were shown for skier visits and how many each state makes. I was surprised on the portion that vermont made up as it was more than i thought. The next seminar i attended was Motivating Marketing to Millenials. Here i learned taht millenials are the Ski industry's largest target market and are the largest generation. i felt that this whole presentaion was poorly put together. It seemed that she took the information right of the internet and alot of the graphs didnt make sense. It didnt even seem that the speaker was familiar with her own slide show. Some slides did not seem accurate at all. overall all information given was things i already knew and most did. The last Seminar that i attended was put on by Sustainable Energy Developements. SED is a company that builds and constructs wind turbines. They have been successful in selling their turbines to resorts and are looking to build more at ski resorts. Resorts that have already built turbines have been happy with them and would probably say that it is a good investment. Jiminy Peak was a big project for SED and the whole deal has been very successful as they make enough energy to run their whole resort and then some. massachusett state law also allows them to sell their remaining energy back to the state with brings in more revenue for the resort. Resorts were also warned about all permitting and building setbacks they may run into. the realistic timeline to have a turbine put up is 1-2 years. Durring the tradeshow portion of the summit i first spoke to Matt from SED and he told us everything we need to now about wind turbines. We discussed the turbine at Burke Mountain and were informed that they did infact build it. Matt also told us about the permitting process and a timeline to build a turbine at your resort. I asked him how long it typically takes to construct a turbine and he informed me that the actual build process doesnt take very long but its the permitting and regulations that take all of the time.
Also durring the tradeshow i spoke with Maynard Russel from ChairKid conveyors. The product that ChairKid Showcased was their lift conveyor. These cna be found all over the country an the world. The conveyors are put in place to prevent accidents while loading the lift. it basically does all the work for you while you load the chair. I have been on these conveyors and the do make the process a whole lot easier. The best application for a ChairKid conveyor is a lift that services all types of terrain, both beginner and expert trails. Reason being it can load everyone at the same speed and there is no tripping or shuffling while trying to get onto the chair. Maynard also informed us that there are a lot more of these conveyors build in europe. When we asked why that was, he told us that europes government subsidises improvements for ski resorts as they see that sking is a huge part of their econmy. i found this fact very interesting. Overall the New England Winter Sports Summit was a great time and i Learned A lot. NEWSS got me very excited for the rest of work we will do in this years practicum.
Dude I didn't the millennial speech was that great. I felt almost blacklisted in our group because I was the only one in our group that had a tattoo, let alone seven. I'm also not sure why she did not recommend the freestyle skiing and snowboarding among the millennial generation. Freestyle riding and skiing is at the front line for the development of the ski Industry. More parks, summer camps, pro riders and skiers, etc are coming up each day around the U.S. I was shocked she didn't mention that as a trend.
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