Ski resorts across the globe are facing unchartered changes and challenges with the onset of the COVID pandemic. With the ski season around the corner, Bolton Valley needed to find a marketing solution that could enable communication with guests, expand influence, and increase engagement across new and existing resort customers. Last month, Bolton Valley selected Ascent360 to help them drive new business and increase revenue during an unprecedented year that has rocked the ski resort industry.
Read this article to learn about Bolton Valley, some of the challenges Bolton Valley (and other ski resorts) face this season, and why the resort chose Ascent360.
About Bolton Valley
Founded in 1966, Bolton Valley is a unique all-seasons resort located just 30 minutes from downtown Burlington and Lake Champlain, high in the Green Mountains of Vermont within 5,000 acres of forest. It is home to an alpine village with a large and welcoming community of outdoor enthusiasts, families and working professionals.
Bolton Valley offers guest a wide range of winter activities including skiing or snowboarding, telemark or Nordic, backcountry or night skiing or just a relaxing snowshoe in the woods. During the summer, the resort offers Mountain Biking, summer camps, disc golf, and hiking trails.
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Challenges & Marketing Needs
Many ski and all-season resorts faced a new set of challenges due to the pandemic. The typical way of marketing to new and existing customers, pre-pandemic, no longer works. For example, Bolton Valley needed a marketing solution that made it easy to communicate with guests about where to go and how to ski with minimal in-person contact. In previous years, events were a great way for the resort to connect with customers and expand their brand's influence. However, this year face-to-face interactions are limited, providing fewer opportunities to engage customers.
Often times important customer data is siloed in across multiple software tools like ski resort ticketing systems. This year, Bolton Valley needed an all-in-one solution that could bring all of their data together, particularly from their customer database Axess. With a single view of their customer data, the resort plans to find loyal customers and identify those that could be brand ambassadors.
To summarize, Bolton Valley needed to solve the following marketing challenges:
- Easily communicate with customers about updated resort policies and safety information
- Unlock and leverage customer data to find loyal customers
- Create opportunities for customer engagement beyond face-to-face interactions
- Build and launch tailored multi-channel marketing campaigns
- Integrate marketing systems including Axess, a ski resort ticketing system
The Solution: Ascent360
Bolton Valley, along with other leading ski resorts like Mammoth, Mission Ridge, and Wachusett Mountain, partner with Ascent360 for our reputation of executing marketing automation campaigns that enhance data insights and improve communication with new and existing resort customers.
Bolton Valley's Director of Sales and Marketing, Scott Pellegrini, shares his thoughts on the partnership with Ascent360:
We are excited to use Ascent360 to leverage our existing data and more easily unlock insights for our loyal customer base. This will enable us to find more customers like them, while empowering existing customers to serve as brand ambassadors.
-Scott Pellegrini, Director of Sales & Marketing at Bolton Valley
The Bolton Valley marketing team looks forward to utilizing Ascent360 to increase customer engagement with opportunities for customers to "share the stoke" by telling friends where they like to ski and what they love about the resort.
It's 10 times harder to engage with a new resort customer than it is with an existing one, especially during this challenging environment. The Ascent360 platform helps resort marketers harness the power of their own data by understanding their customers better, all from a single view. With proven, automated marketing campaigns, resorts can reach guests with messages that matter such as resort safety protocols. The Ascent360 team looks forward to helping Bolton Valley, and other ski resorts, better market and grow their influence this season.
Ski Resorts, Take the Next Step
If you're a ski resort marketer looking to improve communication with guests and automate proven marketing campaigns that increase revenue, even during these challenging times, check out our solution tailor-made for ski resorts here. You can also request a demo of the Ascent360 platform by clicking the button below.
