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Life in a Resort Town
02 months ago
As it’s the week before the Resort is scheduled to open, things are ramping up. Just in case it weren’t busy enough, our household had a rather unusual activity happen over the last week. We had a national tv commercial filmed in our backyard!
To my understanding, the location people were looking for a nice backyard with a fence around it, and strange as it seems, our backyard fit the bill. The process was remarkably smooth, but also remarkably fast in that our door was knocked upon during lunch on Friday, the location people spent perhaps 10 or 15 minutes in our yard, came back the next morning for about an hour, after which we chatted that evening about details and signed paperwork on the Monday which lead to set up on Wednesday and filming on Thursday and Friday, whew! We certainly don’t expect this sort of thing ever happening again in our yard, so we took a ton of photos and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of having our backyard transformed into a Hollywood set.
The interesting part is that I’m sure that this would never have happened if we didn’t live in a resort town as I know the commercial filmed each day on Main Street here in Park City and I’m guessing that they just needed to figure out a place to shoot the rest of their scenes – which became our yard. In any case, here are some photos documenting one of the more unique few days that we’ve had at our house!
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Technology Overkill?
02 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
Working in the interactive marketing often gives me pause about how much technological intrusion into our daily lives is right. I try not to judge, but this product seems like it might cross the line in terms of bringing too much technology into the ski or snowboard experience. That and the fact that I have enough troubles keeping goggles in good shape and de-fogged to have to worry about a screen inside the goggles! In any case, here’s a nice video about the new Android equipped MOD and MOD Live goggles via engaget, let me know if you’d use these in the comments:
Release the Hounds – Google+ Pages are out
02 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
There aren’t many spare moments these days and so it was with a lot of jumping in and out that I watched the unveiling of Google+ pages. It seemed to roll in fits and starts because the Create a Page feature wasn’t quite ready when Google started promoting it. This led to many of us wondering what the story was and as the issue wasn’t clearly lined out, I even questioned why expectations weren’t clearly set as it seems that the delay was due to the sheer volume of data centers and servers that needed to get updates pushed out to them. Now, everyone has access and it seems like many brands are starting the process of figuring out exactly what Google+ pages will do for them.
Having spent a few month on Google+, it definitely seems to me that the stream, integration with other Google products like YouTube, Picassa and obviously search that Google+ pages have a lot of potential. As with any channel, it will definitely be up to the end-user/brand to effectively and creatively use the tool. But I think that there are lots of creative directions that one can go, and the nice part is, it’s not a land rush as Google is not giving away although we should all be paying attention to Direct Connect and ensuring that your brand name is ready as it becomes more “readily available”. To learn more, check out the video below:
3 Years of The Resort Marketing Blog
43 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
It’s hard to believe, but another year of blogging has flown past, making this blog officially 3 years old as of today. If you dare, take a peak at the first post ever (be warned, it’s a rough one), and Happy Birthday to the Resort Marketing Blog. Keeping it short, here’s my goal for the coming year:
Hope you’re doing the same and I hope to see you on the slopes and on the pages of this blog – cheers!
Google Search Changes
03 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
It seems like the good folks at Google like to change things up, even in their bread and butter search segment, which they did last week. If you missed it, it’s that some of us signed into our Google accounts are getting redirected to https://www.google.com, note the “s”. Most are certainly in favor of more security, in particular with companies like Google which have a large volume of our preferences even in innocuous things such as search. But what Google has done is taken the step of stripping referer data from links referred to from pages that are search via SSL connection. This just clicked last Tuesday and I can see an appreciable uptick of what Google now call “not provided” keyword searches in a Google Analtyics account report:
Sorry for all the redacting blurring.
If you want to look for yourself, it’s under traffic sources/search/overview and then select “keyword” in the viewing selector. And if you want a deep dive on all the implications on this switch from the best in the business on search, check out this post on Search Engine Land.
NBA Lockout Boon?
03 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
Just a quick thought: “Will the NBA lockout be a benefit to ski resorts?”
I’d say “yes”.
Sure a lot of NBA basketball fans might not be skiers or snowboarders, but if the lockout does extend out over the busy Christmas – New Years time frame, I’m hopeful that more people will be hitting the slopes as opposed to checking out the traditional Christmas triple header basketball game. And that’s just people who live within an easy drive of a ski resort. What about those folks that do buy season tickets? They certainly have discretionary income and will have some of that coming back into their pockets, why not invest it in getting to the slopes and having some fun? I wonder what a package name for these folks would be…
- Trade the Court for the Slopes
- NBA – Nothing But Altitude
- Slamma Jamma in the Mountains
- 3-pt Shots < Face Shots
- Backboards for Snowboards
Ok, these might not be quite the grabber they could be, but you get the point, get basketball fans to take some of their hard-earned cash and put it into buying lift tickets as opposed to NBA basketball tickets – why not?
Photo credit: Flickr user j9sk9sThe Facebook News Feed
03 months ago
I heard about this presentation via the Marketing Over Coffee podcast (you’re probably thinking podcasts, who listen to those anymore, but I like to listen to them when I’m on the treadmill, helps to distract me from the monotony of running in place) and it’s a great example of how content gets shared and engaged with on Facebook users’ walls. Enjoy “Feeding the Beast: Maximizing your Facebook Newsfeed Value” from Justin Kistner of Webtrends:
Keep that Website Humming Along
03 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
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Amazon is introducing a really neat feature to their nifty Kindle Fire
But a company posting a website isn’t able to control how an end-user accesses their site and not many are visiting with Opera mobile and none with Amazon Silk at the moment. So, in terms of websites there are some optimization techniques that larger sites can use, including the use of web accelerators such as Varnish or Squid. If you’re a developer or have some good coding chops, it should be relatively easy for you to configure and keep up this sort of software on your web server.
If you’re a weekend updater, have a more basic website then perhaps you need something a bit more basic. I heard about CloudFlare a few weeks ago via the Marketing Over Coffee podcast and installed it on the Resort Marketing Blog back towards the end of September. CloudFlare basically does what the fancy software options do, but with an end-user only needing to adjust a few simple DNS settings. Plus, they protect your site from abusive bots and spammers. It’s a really slick concept, that is quite complicated, but as an end-user it seems really simple and it just works, check out this dashboard showing a week’s worth of traffic to this blog:
Click image to enlarge
To be clear, I did add CloudFlare to this WordPress self-hosted blog through the W3 EDGE WordPress plugin. CloudFlare also offers their own WordPress plugin, which I don’t have any experience with but does look to be a bit more compact than W3 EDGE.
Good luck and keep that website humming!
Thanks
04 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
My job is interactive marketing.
I use technology constantly.
Steve Jobs envisioned and made possible many of the tools that make my job easier.
It’s been enlightening to read through Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address at Stanford University in June of 2005, here are a few quotes:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
A bit further on he noted:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Wonderful advice again. Finally and simply:
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
RIP Steve Jobs, you will be missed, but your legacy, in accomplishments and in wisdom will live on.
Airline Fee Model for Ski Resorts?
44 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
Airlines are raking it in with their fees these days…$1.38 Billion (for baggage and reservation changes) in the first three months of this year alone! Now, I don’t agree that airlines pay no taxes on the fees they collect from things such as checked bags, assigned seats, itinerary changes and those lovely ‘snack packs’. In particular, I find a statement from Spirit Airlines’ CEO Ben Baldanza in his testimony before the House Transportation Committee that checked bags are “not essential” to travel. Well Mr Baldanza, for anyone going on a vacation other than to a nudist colony, you might want to pack along a change or two of clothes, and if you’re taking a ski vacation I can think of a few other items to pack along as well.
This did get me to wondering if perhaps the airline fee-based model could work for the ski resort industry. In fact, here are a few ideas for fees that ski resorts could charge as well as a “lift ticket”:
- Parking Fee – how about charging even more for people who don’t pre-pay for their parking?!
- Man-Made Snow Access Fee – this would a great revenue producer in the early season, if you don’t pay, you don’t get to ski on the runs with man-made snow
- Grooming Fee – those fancy grooming machines aren’t cheap and the people who drive them don’t work for free, so why not a fee to ski the groomed runs
- Terrain Park Fee – jibs and jumps need a huge amount of building and maintenance
- Mountain Evacuation Fee – I figure this could apply to any number of things, from toboggan rides to lift evacs
- First Tracks Fee – for those who adhere to the “No friends on a powder day rule” and can afford to buy their fresh tracks
- Front of the Line Fee – lift-line cutting fee for those who hate to wait
- Gear Fee – you can ride the lift, but if you want to bring along a ski, pole or snowboard…pay up
What do you think about this shift to à la carte based pricing in the travel industry? Is it good, bad and what other crazy fees do you think a ski resort could charge for?!
Photo Credit: rcmaclean on Flickr
