WARNING - Super long post ahead! I had a thought this afternoon when I saw this post about Vail upping day lift tickets to $160. As someone who has been in and studied the ski industry a lot, and knows the economics, I can relate to higher ticket prices. Then I looked at the picture of Vail ( Ive never been) and thought, wow, what a boring looking mountain. Imagine if there was a new pricing strategy for ski hills. Few if any have nailed it so far, so why not think outside of the box a bit. I would love to see a ski hill somewhere try out the strategy of Pay what you think its worth. Logistically maybe its like pumping gas where you Authorize up to a certain amount, then at the end of the day select what youd like to pay based on what you thought it was worth. Radiohead is the big example to look at in this model. Way back in the early 2000s they put out an album and allowed listeners to pay what they thought it was worth. In the end their overall yield was significantly higher than when they put a price tag on alubms. Yes you would get a lot of dirtbags paying nothing (maybe you have a low minimum charge), but youd also get a bunch of people paying more than avg ticket price when they have the best day of their life on the mountain. The first response from my brother when I mentioned this was Maybe, but that would never work in the ski industry, I asked Why. He suggested because skiers are young and freeloading dirtbags essentially. To which I asked,is the music industry (Where free is the norm) not younger and even cheaper than skiers? The avg. North American Skier is wealthy and 40+. I dont have stats on the music industry, but suspect music buyers are younger and less well off. What do you think? Could it work employing a pay what you think its worth strategy for ski areas? Id love to see it tried as for the majority of ski operations the current pricing / business model is not working. It would likely work best for a place like Red, where you have a unique product that truly is a great experience much of the time, rather than a place like Vail where the skiing experience ( based on this picture, and skier visits alone) is not nearly the same. It actually might have a side benefit of helping level out traffic if people knew that days that were less desirable would be cheaper, and pow days more expensive. If the model holds true based on other industries that have tried it, the likely result would be a higher yield per person, a more satisfied customer which equals more return visits, and initially at least for whoever goes first, a whole pile of free press. When this takes off. Remember, you heard it here first :)
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 23:18:54 +0000
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