Marketing Your Bike Park - What's Selling and What's Driving Them Away
Marketing your Bike Park - What's Selling and What's Driving Them Away Moderator: Hugh Reynolds, VP Marketing SNOW Operating Panelists: Rob Megnin, Director of Sales & Marketing Killington Kara Chase, Marketing Manager Mountain Creek Brian Finestone, Parks Manager Whistler Blackcomb
Running a successful park is 50% Operations and 50% Marketing Oren Tanzer
How Do Balance Marketing for Growth Without Losing Our Souls?
NSAA Mt Biking Summit Mt Biking: Multi Channel message distribution Killington
Rob Megnin, Director Marketing, Sales, Reservations & Snow Sports Killington Pico Mt Biking for 25 years this summer Expanded operations lower end: Summer 15 Starting to market specifically to all segments FY17. WOM has had significant impact in FY16. 75% Completed Snowshed Trail System lower end program with Gravity Logic design team. Finish this summer and start Ramshead this summer. Visits for FY16 increased 25% over FY15 and 75% over FY14 Fleet of bikes will increase substantially TY at 160 bikes. Fleet expanded by 40 units over FY15 Includes 30 Kids bikes + 20 Strider bikes for kids (not in the 160 above) Tying in Strider Bike event to CITM concerts w/ LOTS of families Revenue increase of 68%, or $212K, over FY15 Included in that number is 2,500 rentals FY16 Less than 1% of total resort revenue, BUT Growing! Partnerships with Rutland/Mountain Creek
General Marketing philosophies Market the entire Adventure Center look for cross over trial opportunities FY16 FY17 take on segmentation to a higher degree. Endemic pubs and sites Use Gravity Logic brand in merchandising for those in the know Try not to show too much high end riding in segmentation to families and lower end Use our year round branding elements in Mt bike program
Summer Ticket Growth # of Guests 8,500 8,000 7,500 7,000 6,500 6,000 5,500 5,000 4,500 4,000 3,500 Year Mountain Bike +64% 2013 2015 40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 Summer Activities +146% 2013 2015 Total Year 2015 2013 +126% 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 # of Guests
Online digi ads Print use Rack distribution /On site
Print applications Online: Endemic sites Trial promotions Home Page Hero
Mobile application On site 4-wall, print and other applications 2016 Kids & Family Adventure Center Mt Biking
4241 Magazine: Mt Bike segments Instructional segments in 4241 Magazine our resort publication
Beast of the East Pro GRT July 28-31, 2016
Video productions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n-gvxt-mtc https://youtu.be/yrdgiwdhnua https://youtu.be/aiyfnev4yse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clmdrabdaz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j1z0z89zam
The Way We Were Mountain Creek operated a (XC/DH) bike park in 1999 & 2000 Mountain Creek sub-leased the mountain bike operation to a 3 rd party operator from 2003-2011 One of the original east coast downhill parks The Product was: Hardcore Expert/Advanced terrain Aggressive rocky east coast terrain only Aggressive bring it marketing voice Created proprietary Pro/AM event- US Open of Mountain Biking put Diablo Freeride Park and Mountain Creek on the map
Today Assumed operations in 2012 New resort ownership in 2010 and again 2015 Significant remediation and resort expansion capital Changed the name Mountain Creek Bike Park Created a friendlier, more social brand and persona Introduction and expansion of beginner / intermediate friendly trails Summer 2015- Greenhorn Fall 2015- Pump Track Summer 2016- NEW Beginner trail Summer- 2016- Sugar Expansion Created basic camp/lessons programming
Today cont. Current Areas of focus: Identify and break down barriers of downhill and trail mountain biking Increase our Intelligence of our Customers Through the rush of our growth we are JUST starting to really dig into who our customer is and look at the story that the data is telling us. Where are kids currently biking? Need to balance hardcore downhiller, weekend warrior and the new conversion People who have an interest in biking and do not know how to enter the sport Retention and Increased Utilization Focus on Filling Product Funnel (next slide)
Today cont. Opening and supporting emerging markets Women s Programming Family Experiences Kids programming and products Trail/Enduro Bike Market (Examine where the bike market is headed) Online Tickets / Liftopia Newly launched in May Makes the purchase process smoother Minimal discount (27% max) versus 68%
Youth Women Camps Clinics Never evers Groups Lower Price! 1X Experience Downhill NEW! 3X Experience Downhill Daily Lift (with or without rental) Triple Play Season Pass
The numbers Roughly $1M topline Total visits: Summer 12-11,152 Summer 16 (goal)- 20,000 Season Passes: Summer 12-343 Summer 16 (goal) - 546 Triple Play: Summer 12-0 Summer 16(goal) 315 (currently 377) * 5% migration from Triple Play to Season Pass Online Tickets: Summer 16 (goal) -10% of overall ticket sales
Marketing Direction of the market Companies like Strider, Lil Shredder, Kona and Commencal helping drive this initiative Direction of the All mountain bike (not needing a full DH bike to ride lift access) Learn from the ski industry circa 2001 with images of extreme skiing Maintain Core Product Keep the foundation strong Programming Thursday Night Race Series, ProGRT, MTB Parks Ranking Female Focused Campaign Title: Be THAT Girl! Aggressive hard core DH to more beginner friendly terrain Building out beginner terrain Pump tracks Sugar
Marketing Talking to the engaged core: Social Media Email NEW Acquisition: Email /CRM Beginner Lesson Triple Play Digital Advertising Facebook Localized non-endemic
Imagery Camps / Women Family The Core Kids Beginner
Future Progression focused learning Expand camp and lesson offerings CRM to help with conversion As we open the funnel, we open to more risk Ensuring we can
On Hill Marketing
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Thank You! hugh@snowoperating.com rmegnin@killington.com kchase@mountaincreek.com bfinestone@whistlerblackcomb.com