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Challenge: Improve the customer experience.
Solution: Create a Web-based vacation planning tool for those considering visiting Park City Mountain Resort.
Results: Half of the people who visited the planner created profiles, 41 percent of registrants mapped out their vacations and 46 percent of the profile users opted in for future marketing. This effort is credited with causing a 7 percent year-over-year increase in PCMR vacations during the 2008-09 ski season, as well as an 11 percent increase in children’s ski and snowboard lessons.
In a family of four, a ski vacation probably sounds fun to three of them—dad and the kids. But to mom, it sounds like packing four pairs of snow boots and skis, battling ski lesson and mealtime conflicts, and rushing from the airport to the hotel.
“In our focus groups that we’ve done with moms, they’ve said that a ski vacation is not a vacation; it is a trip,” says Krista Parry, director of marketing and communications for Park City Mountain Resort. “So we wanted to make the trip a vacation, a relaxing vacation, because that’s what families need these days.”
During summer 2007, the resort hired advertising agency Thomas Taber & Drazen (TTD) of Denver to work on branding and positioning. The core of the project, the Park City Mountain Resort Vacation Planner, came online in fall 2007.
E-mails to previous resort vacationers directed recipients to the planner landing page. The resort’s homepage touted the new offering, and brochures about it went to anyone requesting information from the resort in Park City, Utah, or from the Park City Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
Once in the planner, registrants could outline the dates of their stays, what activities they’d like to participate in and where they’d like to go. Additionally, they could e-mail members of a group, and those individuals could add in their preferences. (Parry says as people planned their trips, the resort discovered the “alpha moms” they appealed to were not e-mailing anyone else—presumably to keep their children’s e-mail addresses private.)
“We did find that when it was … a couple families coming over spring break … there were a couple families that were within one itinerary,” Parry adds.
It was rather clear, though, these were family vacations being planned—as one of the most popular areas of the resort was Gorgoza Park. After riding an inner tube downhill, children can navigate a miniature snowmobile track, visit the Fort Frosty play area and then relax in “a cozy yurt.”
Another slight surprise came when it was clear that people were planning their vacations three to four weeks before arrival—instead of the three- to four-month lead time the resort had expected. This information added insight and helped the resort time future marketing efforts.
But, of course, the planner had to provide immediate results. Those came in the form of half of the planner page visitors creating profiles, 41 percent of whom planned vacations and 46 percent of whom opted in for future communication. So, considering the resort didn’t yet accept online reservations as of press time, the opt-in for future communications allowed the resort to call and follow up on registrants’ plans and help them book their vacations.
Because the planner was the resort’s only marketing push through April 2009, it’s believed to be responsible for the 7 percent year-over-year increase in vacationers during the 2008-09 ski season, as well as its 11 percent increase in children’s ski and snowboard lessons.
More than that, planner registrants provided their street addresses. So marketing efforts can be geotargeted down to the census block level. The resort then can send communications based on when that area’s schools have winter breaks. Five e-mail versions target registrants based on their activities, which brings to mind a tangential benefit.
And, to boot, agency TTD became an official honoree in the tourism Web site section of the 2009 Webby Awards.
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