Top 10 Ways to Revitalize Killington

[Mister Moose]

It occured to me to look at the closing date trend next to the traffic counters.





Not doctorate level thesis work, but interesting never the less. Is the traffic data available for farther back than 2005?

[chewbacca]

If you talk like you're The Beast, and you ADVERTISE you are The Beast---you have to act like The Beast. If you talk the talk you gotta walk the walk. There is not much wiggle room or much compromise. You are or you are not. K, right now is a wanna-b-beast. A bean-counters-beast. Limp. More lipsick please. 5819, 5820, 5821 those are the #'s from the traffic clickers.

Upthread: K-Road nightlife? There are few places in the East or West as good. Only a few better, like Whistler/Blackhomb, Vail, Mammoth...But in the east K-Road is the Beast--not Powdr or SP. That may not be enough with changing demo's. And with the Police State mentality up here...less will come.

Great graphs Mr. Moose.

[SnoBrdr]

So last year was THE BEAST campaign. Genius at work. I wonder what the new brand will be for next year? Maybe THE MONSTER?

I'm going to say that next year the Beast will be back in full green atire. What gets changed in marketing is the website.

As a decision, going with "The Beast" was not the mistake. It was failing to over deliver after they under promised.

Snowmaking, (except throwing 20% more on Superstar) was acceptable to everyone, customer service improved, food stayed the same, grooming was ok but still room for improvement, seeded bumps were well received and hopefully return bigger and earlier next year, staffing levels still show a lean operation, and lift ops kept things running for the most part. They even shifted operation hours for the late spring. It was the closing ahead of the announced date with adequate snow (and spring pass customers complaining) that left a sour taste in everyone's mouth.

In ranking after ranking, the entity known as "The Killington access road" scores high as the party place to be in ski country in the east. It is a major attraction for the resort. POWDR would be well served to cultivate this, help the restaurants and bars prosper and grow. Closing earlier than other resorts doesn't help.

If "The Beast" was such a great marketing strategy, why did the traffic counts on the Access Road continue to decline?

The problem is obviously the lack of a high speed lift on Snowdon.

You can't necessarily measure a marketing campaign by one year's results, especially when the campaign is trying to regain core customers who turned to other ski areas. The Beast campaign was not a failure, rather the failure was in failing to match the operation with the message. That will cost them going forward, regardless of whose bonus might have been at risk this year.

By the way, I've been told that skier visits were up this year by several thousand. I believe, however, that the skier visit count includes Pico which I believe saw a significant increase due to its pricing. That means Killington was flat or even down over last year.

How many do you figure that K lost to other areas ?

100, 1000, 10,000 or have people just stopped coming because of the costs/economy .

[Geoff]

How many do you figure that K lost to other areas ?

100, 1000, 10,000 or have people just stopped coming because of the costs/economy .

You know, I get tired of helpless people who just speculate. The data is out there. Go look it up instead of making sh*t up.

If you go with VSAA data:
2000-2001 4.5 million, the all-time high
2006-2007 3,820,431
2007-2008 4,354,621
2008-2009 4,068,696

http://www.examiner.com/x-4364-Skiing-E ... 809-season

I think that from traffic counter and sales tax data from the state, one can safely assume Killington is down by 1/3 from their historical skier visit numbers. Based on the Vermont data, people are still skiing. They're just not skiing at Killington.

If you go dig into Maine skier visit numbers, you'll find that Sunday River is also up. An awful lot of those people are former Killington people.

[Mister Moose]

If you go with VSAA data:
2000-2001 4.5 million, the all-time high
2006-2007 3,820,431
2007-2008 4,354,621
2008-2009 4,068,696

Good point. Let's look at all the data they reported.


I did some curve fitting to even out the noise of year to year oscillations.



Down the road at Okemo, they have had an impressive 20 year growth, and their last 10 years seems to mirror Vermont's overal trends. They grew through 2003 and have held steady since.


Compare to Killington access road traffic counts:



Since 2005, Vermont Skier visits have been nearly flat but downward slightly, down from 4.3 million to 4.25 million. VSAA is expecting a slight increase from 2009, as depicted. This is a decrease of 1.2%.

Since 2005, Killington road traffic in February (a month containing both excellent mid winter conditions and a large holiday week), has decreased from 8,703 to 6,893, a decrease of 20.8%. Some of this may be attributable to factors such as car pooling, but that only goes so far. Traffic is down, way down, and it isn't just because of an exodus to Sunday River by the Boston folks. It's a significant reduction of market share within the State of Vermont, which meanwhile held nearly steady.

[daytripper]

1.
2. Diffently need to lengthen the ski season again. Making Super Star the spring trail is to costly. Plenty of other trails to do spring skiing that could be buried with a good snow pack.

What is wrong with superstar for spring? No runout, TONS of snowmaking on it and they have been using it for years n years, lets not reinvent the wheel, lets just put some runflat snow tires on it.

[Geoff]

1.
2. Diffently need to lengthen the ski season again. Making Super Star the spring trail is to costly. Plenty of other trails to do spring skiing that could be buried with a good snow pack.

What is wrong with superstar for spring? No runout, TONS of snowmaking on it and they have been using it for years n years, lets not reinvent the wheel, lets just put some runflat snow tires on it.

...but Superstar did re-invent the wheel. June 1 skiing used to be on Upper Downdraft with loading at the midstation of the Killington double. Narrower trail. Higher elevation. Much better snow preservation. A fraction of the cost to blow the snow.

Superstar was always more of an "I'm defying nature" kind of thing.

[RENO]

Such pretty charts...
A few more please...

[skiadikt]

1.
2. Diffently need to lengthen the ski season again. Making Super Star the spring trail is to costly. Plenty of other trails to do spring skiing that could be buried with a good snow pack.

What is wrong with superstar for spring? No runout, TONS of snowmaking on it and they have been using it for years n years, lets not reinvent the wheel, lets just put some runflat snow tires on it.

...but Superstar did re-invent the wheel. June 1 skiing used to be on Upper Downdraft with loading at the midstation of the Killington double. Narrower trail. Higher elevation. Much better snow preservation. A fraction of the cost to blow the snow.

Superstar was always more of an "I'm defying nature" kind of thing.

while i remember doing the late season skiing on downdraft, i don't remember it being the "scene" w/ all the tailgating etc that supe became. remember the liftline at the midstation going back up the hill early season but not so much late season. i think they pretty much switched over to late season on supe if not in it's first season, by it's second and i think late season then became more popular. being at the base seemed to promote more of a scene.

but yeah building 25-30 ft base depths on supe was certainly shock & awe and pres' way of flipping mama nature the bird.

btw where do those traffic counter numbers come from?

[Bubba]

1.
2. Diffently need to lengthen the ski season again. Making Super Star the spring trail is to costly. Plenty of other trails to do spring skiing that could be buried with a good snow pack.

What is wrong with superstar for spring? No runout, TONS of snowmaking on it and they have been using it for years n years, lets not reinvent the wheel, lets just put some runflat snow tires on it.

...but Superstar did re-invent the wheel. June 1 skiing used to be on Upper Downdraft with loading at the midstation of the Killington double. Narrower trail. Higher elevation. Much better snow preservation. A fraction of the cost to blow the snow.

Superstar was always more of an "I'm defying nature" kind of thing.

while i remember doing the late season skiing on downdraft, i don't remember it being the "scene" w/ all the tailgating etc that supe became. remember the liftline at the midstation going back up the hill early season but not so much late season. i think they pretty much switched over to late season on supe if not in it's first season, by it's second and i think late season then became more popular. being at the base seemed to promote more of a scene.

but yeah building 25-30 ft base depths on supe was certainly shock & awe and pres' way of flipping mama nature the bird.

Allen Wilson said once that it made no business sense to blow all that snow on Superstar.....

[skiadikt]

1.
2. Diffently need to lengthen the ski season again. Making Super Star the spring trail is to costly. Plenty of other trails to do spring skiing that could be buried with a good snow pack.

What is wrong with superstar for spring? No runout, TONS of snowmaking on it and they have been using it for years n years, lets not reinvent the wheel, lets just put some runflat snow tires on it.

...but Superstar did re-invent the wheel. June 1 skiing used to be on Upper Downdraft with loading at the midstation of the Killington double. Narrower trail. Higher elevation. Much better snow preservation. A fraction of the cost to blow the snow.

Superstar was always more of an "I'm defying nature" kind of thing.

while i remember doing the late season skiing on downdraft, i don't remember it being the "scene" w/ all the tailgating etc that supe became. remember the liftline at the midstation going back up the hill early season but not so much late season. i think they pretty much switched over to late season on supe if not in it's first season, by it's second and i think late season then became more popular. being at the base seemed to promote more of a scene.

but yeah building 25-30 ft base depths on supe was certainly shock & awe and pres' way of flipping mama nature the bird.

Allen Wilson said once that it made no business sense to blow all that snow on Superstar.....

bubba, you'd probably know better than anyone the increase in energy costs over the last 20 years or so. seems to me that season pass prices have pretty much stayed constant over the same period (other than the 2 or 3 cheap asc yrs). don't think pass prices have even come close to keeping up with the increase in energy costs.

[Coydog]

Allen Wilson said once that it made no business sense to blow all that snow on Superstar.....

Might explain why Wilson had no business sense.

[Geoff]

btw where do those traffic counter numbers come from?

The data is on the Vermont Department of Transportation site:
http://www.aot.state.vt.us/Planning/Doc ... ns/pub.htm

It's kind of a PITA. You click on the monthly data which is a huge file. Search on "Killington". The first data is the traffic counter on Route 4. The 2nd page you hit is the Access Road. To look at all 6 years data available, you'd have to open 72 really big files. That's why I never bothered with the other 9 months.

The sales tax data is just as tedious.

The whole point is that Killington has a midwinter problem. Buying the Fireside property does nothing to address that. Anything the useless EDC has proposed does nothing to address that. Building a fortress gated communitity in the parking lots and making the day customers park in remote lots doesn't address that. If you can't get the people to show up on the Access Road to spend money, the town falls apart.

[SnoBrdr]

btw where do those traffic counter numbers come from?

The data is on the Vermont Department of Transportation site:
http://www.aot.state.vt.us/Planning/Doc ... ns/pub.htm

It's kind of a PITA. You click on the monthly data which is a huge file. Search on "Killington". The first data is the traffic counter on Route 4. The 2nd page you hit is the Access Road. To look at all 6 years data available, you'd have to open 72 really big files. That's why I never bothered with the other 9 months.

The sales tax data is just as tedious.

The whole point is that Killington has a midwinter problem. Buying the Fireside property does nothing to address that. Anything the useless EDC has proposed does nothing to address that. Building a fortress gated communitity in the parking lots and making the day customers park in remote lots doesn't address that. If you can't get the people to show up on the Access Road to spend money, the town falls apart.

And you gave me a smart answer when I asked a question about data.

I tried to find the info on my own but as you said there is just too much data.

[Geoff]

And you gave me a smart answer when I asked a question about data.

I tried to find the info on my own but as you said there is just too much data.

I looked up enough to make my point about the decline at Killington relative to state skier visit data. Exactly what have you done other than express unfounded opinions?