The Biggest Ski Resorts On Facebook

According to a report by website SkiReports.com at the end of December 2011, California's Mammoth Mountain was about to be the first ski resort in the world to hit the 100,000 Facebook Fans mark with 99,458 fans.
With the 100,000 fans mark now passed, research by Skiinfo.com, a division of Mountain News Corporation, has found that Mammoth has been overtaken by its neighbour to the north, Heavenly and joined by Vail and Canada’s Whistler as the four resorts with a six figure Facebook fan base.
Eight of the top 10 resorts for fans are all in North America with all but one of those in the USA and five of the top 15 are Vail Resorts properties, including top placed Heavenly as well as Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breckenridge and Northstar – possibly in part reflecting the popularity of the company’s Epic Mix partially social-networking based ticketing and community effort.
Chile's Valle Nevado is the top placed southern hemisphere and Megeve in France the highest non-North American resort for Facebook fans at number five.
The top 10 resorts for Facebook fan numbers have all now passed the 50,000 fans mark.

1. Heavenly (USA); facebook.com/heavenlymountain (122,291 Likes)
2. Mammoth Mountain (USA); facebook.com/MammothMTN (117,247)
3. Vail (USA); facebook.com/vailmtn (112,855)
4. Whistler (Canada); facebook.com/whistlerblackcomb (105,601)
5. Megeve (France); facebook.com/megeve (80,712)
6. Breckenridge (USA); facebook.com/Breckenridge (79,896)
7. Valle Nevado (Chile); facebook.com/pages/Valle-Nevado-Ski-Resort (78,385)
8. Jackson Hole (USA); facebook.com/ jacksonhole (75,632)
9. Keystone (USA); facebook.com/Keystone (65,019)
10. Grandvalira (Andorra); facebook.com/Grandvalira (57,997)
11. Northstar at Tahoe (USA); facebook.com/Northstar (54,692)
12. Saalbach Hinterglemn (Austria); facebook.com/ saalbachhinterglemm (52,195)
13. Vallnord (Andorra); facenbook.com/vallnord (49,480)
14. Mountain High (USA); facebook.com/mthigh (46,392)
15. Squaw Valley (USA); facebook.com/squawvalley (44,562)
16. Beaver Creek (USA); facebook.com/beavercreek (43,375)
17. Are (Sweden); facebook.com/skistarare (37,519)
18. Bukovel (Ukraine); facebook.com/bukovel (37,509)
19. Sun Valley (USA); facebook.com/ sunvalley (36,815)
20. Ischgl (Austria); facebook.com/ paznaun.ischgl (36,813)
21. Killington (USA); facebook.com/killingtonresort (36,715)
22. Mountain Creek (USA); facebook.com/MountainCreekNJ (36,006)
23. Aspen (USA); facebook.com/Aspen/Snowmass (34,494)
24. Sugarloaf (USA); facebook.com/sugarloaf (33,844)
25. Solden (Austria); facebook.com/soelden.oetztal (30,191)
26. Sunday River (USA); facebook.com/sundayriver (29,732)
27. Perisher (Australia); facebook.com/perishereresort (27,709)
28. Hemsedal (Norway); facebook.com/hemsedal (26,992)
29. Tignes (France); facebook.com/Alpe-dHuez-Officiel (26,870)
30. Kitzbuhel (Austria); facebook.com/kitzbuehel (25,718)
31. Laax (Switzerland); facebook.com/LAAX (23,262)

(NB All well known resorts have been checked but this table may be missing some resorts that have not been checked)

By contrast most of the better known resorts in Europe are a long way behind North America with the exception of Andorra’sd two large ski areas and Saalbach Hinterglemm in Austria, all around the 50,000 fans mark and in the world top 11. After these the most popular Facebook pages in Europe are for the top resort in Scandinavia and in Ukraine- only 10 fans apart at the time of compilation.
Of the best know resorts in Western Europe Zermatt has over 14,000 followers and La Plagne has more than 13,000 Facebook followers. St Anton has more than 12,000 followers, Courchevel 10,700 and Mayrhofen has just passed 7,000 followers, just behind St Moritz with 7,400 then Verbier has 4,646 followers.
It can also be hard to track down resorts on Facebook without a direct link to the correct page from their website. Facebook.com/Chamonix for example take you to registered nurse Chamonix Roberts, a Lady Ga Ga fan based in Salt Lake City while www.facebook.com/valdisere takes you to Arpin Bruno’s Facebook page – a large gentleman in a day glo green Borat-style unitard.
Although more than 1,000 ski resorts now have Facebook pages many have made little use of social networking, including some famous name resorts.
Twitter and YouTube are less popular and at the other end of the scale from Heavenly, Alpine Valley in Wisconsin has six followers on Twitter and has made one tweet so far in January this year.

Free Wi-Fi Connection Available to Skiers in Val Thorens

Last Wednesday, April 11th, Aerohive Networks announced that Val Thorens, the highest ski resort in Europe, has deployed Aerohive’s WLAN solution at its ski lifts. In doing so, tourists can use free Wi-Fi rather than incur expensive 3G roaming costs.
The resort already had a Wi-Fi network for internal administrative use, but wanted to expand the network to offer skiers internet access whilst on the slopes. "We want to offer visitors the best services to facilitate their stay in the resort. We are anticipating their needs by offering them access to Wi-Fi on the ski lifts", says Eric Bonnel, Sales and Marketing Director of ski lift company SETAM.
A pilot of the technology was subsequently deployed by reseller and IT partner to Soluceo, Scientific Equipment, in December 2010, to three ski lifts. The deployment took just one day, including configuration.
This was followed by a full roll-out to a further nine ski lifts in November 2011. The solution includes the HiveManager Virtual Management Appliance on VMware and HiveAP340s. It also supports Val Thoren’s Netinary internet control application. The Aerohive deployment has the capacity to support 10,000 devices, concurrently, on the network. As the popularity of the free Wi-Fiservice grows, Val Thorens is assured of the network’s resilience and consistency and quality of service. The HiveAP340 is also especially situable for use on the ski slopes – its water resistance rating, internal thermal management, sunshield and outdoor enclosure isdesigned for sub-zero temperatures.
"Thanks to its easy deployment and use, we can anticipate future upgrades to our solution with no additional investment", adds Elvis Hudry, SETAM Networks and Systems Administrator, who is in charge of the project.
In place for a year, the service has been quickly adopted by tourists, as evidenced by the steadily increasing connection rate – up 30% in January 2012 on January 2011. Accessible to tourists from 8am to 5pm, the resort now sees around one hundred connections a day with each one averaging 10 minutes. The wireless LAN will soon be extended to the neighbouring Orelle resort, to allow tourists to connect from a restaurant terrace.

Ski Utah Yeti Grants Powder Turns in August

Ski Utah, Eider, Rossignol, & Ski La Parva, Chile have launched the Endless Winter Sweepstakes on the Ski Utah Yeti Facebook page. The Sweepstakes aims to rev the stoke of skiers everywhere for many months to come with the Grand Prize of "Powder Turns in August".
Visitors to the Ski Utah Yeti Facebook page between now and April 20 will have the chance to enter to win an all expense paid ski vacation for two people to La Parva, Chile. The Grand Prize is valued at $8,500 and includes a week of ski-in/ski-out lodging, lift tickets, rentals and airfare for two.
Each of the contest entrants will also have the chance to win additional prizes by Rossignol and Eider. Week one of the contest, March 23-30, a winner will receive a choice of Rossignol Super 7 or S7W skis, or a MagTek or Diva MagTek snowboard. Week two (March 30-April 6) the winner will receive the Telluride Jacket by Eider. Contestants who enter at any point during the sweepstakes are automatically entered for the Grand Prize La Parva, Chile trip as well.
"Ski Utah is committed to making powder accessible to our consumers year round", said Ski Utah Content Editor Brandon Ott. "This contest demonstrates our commitment to that promise even in summer’s hottest month".
Ski Utah is the marketing firm owned and operated by the 14 statewide ski resorts (Alta Ski Area, Beaver Mountain, Brian Head Resort, Brighton Resort, Canyons Resort, Deer Valley Resort, Eagle Point, Park City Mountain Resort, Powder Mountain Resort, Snowbasin Resort, Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort, Solitude Mountain Resort, Sundance and Wolf Mountain) that make up the Utah Ski and Snowboard Association. The organization has been creating brand awareness of and demand for the Utah wintersports product since its inception in 1978.

Resorts and Digital Communications

As published in Ski Area Management Magazine (January, 2012)
By Peter Duchessi and Rick Kahl

In fall 2011, executives and managers from almost 100 ski resorts in the U.S. and Canada responded to a survey about their use of several important technologies/services, including social media networks, microblogging services, and resort apps, which their ski resorts employ for promotional and communications purposes. The survey was conducted by GenAura and SAM Magazine, to provide insight into current practices and explore the sales-generating potential for these digital tools.

As resorts expand the range of their digital communications strategies, they are finding success in a growing number of media.
Facebook and Twitter have quickly joined resort websites as major means of digital communications. But other, newer technologies and services, including resort apps, QR codes, and group sales services (e.g., Groupon), are less widespread, and may have potential for areas that adopt them.
These are the key conclusions of a survey conducted by GenAura and SAM Magazine last fall. The survey reached nearly 100 resorts and probed their use of digital communications for both promotional and marketing purposes.
Resorts across North America are effectively using resort websites, social media networks (e.g., Facebook), and microblogging services (e.g., Twitter) to enable their promotional strategies. Ninety-eight percent of the ski resorts have a resort website, 95 percent use social media networks, and 82 percent employ microblogging services for promotional purposes.
But these resorts are less likely to use other new technologies to enable promotional strategies. Just 40 percent of all ski resorts report using group coupon services (e.g., Liftopia, Groupon), and less than a third use location-based services (e.g., Foursquare). Similarly, about one-third of the ski resorts report using QR codes, while just over 20 percent report using resort apps for promotional purposes. Yet all these technologies/services can help boost sales, as a few of the resorts using them have discovered.
And digital promotions succeed, for the most part. The survey showed that conventional promotions dispensed via websites, social networks, Twitter, and text messaging regularly achieve both short- and long-term sales gains. For websites and social networks, more than 80 percent of resorts report that digital promotions increase sales, most often long-term sales. Group coupon services, Twitter and virtual communities that resorts sponsor are also effective.
Other digital communications have the potential to increase sales, although these are not as widely used by resorts. Of resorts that have their own apps, nearly half report initial and prolonged sales increases for promotions that are offered through the apps. This is also true for both on-mountain and off-mountain QR code-based promotions.
Location-based services are can also have a positive sales impact. Almost one-third of ski resorts using location-based services for check ins report a sales increase, and 39 percent using location-based services for task completion report elevated sales.
The takeaway: resorts should explore the newer digital technologies and services, and not rest on the success of the older, more established digital vehicles (websites, Facebook, and Twitter). As consumers expand the range of their digital tools, resorts that follow suit can gain a greater share of wallet.
Communications Strategies
The news here is similar to that for digital promotions: resorts have primarily used websites, social media, Twitter, online advertising, and distribution/sharing services (e.g., YouTube) to enable their communications strategies. For advertising purposes, virtually all resorts use a website and nearly all are present on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. And the majority use paid online advertising.
How effective are these for advertising? A whopping 95 percent of areas report that advertising on their websites drives both short- and long-term sales increases. Additionally, 84 percent of the resorts that advertise via social networks report initial and prolonged sales increases. Paid online advertising succeeds 75 percent of the time, and distribution/sharing and microblogging services pay off between half and two-thirds of the time.
But only a third of resorts are using text messaging and QR codes for advertising purposes. And fewer still use virtual communities and resort apps. Is this because these technologies and services are less effective than websites, social media networks, and microblogging services, or because resorts have not learned to exploit them yet? Hard to say.
Text messaging pays off about half the time. With QR codes and resort apps especially, resorts have a ways to go in using them to raise revenues. Only four in ten of those who use QR code-based ads, on- or offsite, report a sales increase. With resort apps, just 25 percent report a sales increase. Given the great potential of resort-specific apps, it’s clear that there’s a good deal of untapped potential in this avenue.
Bottom Line
What does all this mean? Resorts should continue to use websites, social media networks, microblogging services, distribution/sharing services, and paid online advertising to drive short- and long-term sales. And they should become familiar with the newer technologies, including resort apps, QR codes, and location-based services, because there are opportunities to increase sales with those technologies as well.
Additionally, the survey shows that some technologies and services, including resort apps, distribution/sharing services, and social media networks have more of a long- versus short-term impact on sales; consequently, they are especially useful for retaining customers and keeping them engaged. Not many areas have used resort apps and location-based services for check ins and task completions, but there’s no reason resorts can’t adapt these tools for that purpose. QR codes are also not widely used yet, but resorts that have employed them report increased sales about a third to half of the time, which is encouraging. As resorts become more clever in the way they use QR codes, these percentages will most likely rise.