Case Study #4 - Grand Targhee Resort’s Skicasting

Posted on 4:56 am by Paul Colligan

What:

The Ski and Snowboard industry’s first (at the time of launch) Resort-centric enhanced podcast program from Grand Targhee Resort in Alta, Wyoming. (www.grandtarghee.com/winter/mountain/skicasting.html). Nestled at the foot of the Grand Teton in Grand Teton National Park, Grand Targhee Resort is one of the world’s hottest ski/snowboard areas for those who love to ski/board light, dry powder with annual depths of up to and beyond 500” of snow. Grand Targhee generates approximately 153,000 skier visits per ski season and roughly 85% of their lodging and event/ski bookings come from their www.grandtarghee.com website. Propel Communications (Grand Targhee Resort’s advertising agency in Boise, Idaho) and CorpCasting (Boise, Idaho) established a joint venture to create and deliver Grand Targhee Resort-specific “Skicasts” (mp3 and m4a enhanced podcasts) episodes via iTunes and other podcast directories to prospective and current visitors to the resort.

Propel/CorpCasting’s goal for this past 2006 winter season was to:

1. Increase unique visits to www.grandtarghee.com by 20%.
2. Increase lodging bookings and conversion rate of inquiry to sale of 2%.
3. Broaden Grand Targhee’s brand presence among destination winter travelers who reside in distant, yet larger MSA’s with direct air transportation to Grand Targhee’s closest airports (Jackson, WY and Idaho Falls, ID), in addition to those who have the ability to drive to the resort but have not yet visited.
4. Increase repeat visit frequency for lodging and skiing/snowboarding at the Resort over prior years
5. Develop a new Skicast subscriber base by leveraging email marketing tactics to create and push interest-specific podcasts to in-house, opt-in email list recipients and promote viral adoption of our Skicasts among passionate skiers and snowboarders.

With over 85% of resort bookings coming from our online activities, this year we created what we believe to be the ski and snowboard industry’s first digital “Skicast”. Skicasting is, in its most simple definition, vertical industry enhanced audio podcasting and video blogging for skiers, snowboarders and winter adven¬ture enthusiasts as a means to enhance the visitor experience on-mountain and off by providing skiers and boarders with valuable news, information and fresh perspectives on the winter adventure lifestyle.

Skicasting is a way for us to expand Grand Targhee’s unique brand experience by taking it mobile in both audio and video formats allowing resort visitors to experience Grand Targhee with as many of their individual senses as possible — audibly, visually and even enabling them to share their memorable Grand Targhee moments with friends and family through podcast/enhanced podcast/videocast web distribution. Free of charge, Grand Targhee website visitors can subscribe to (all 11 episodes with a single click) and download a 10 to 12 minute, professionally produced instructional or entertainment MP3 audio file to their PC or Mac computer, iPod or other MP3 player. This frees up visitors to listen to their personal audio/video ski instructor while actually skiing or boarding on the mountain. 2005-2006 Winter season Skicasts covered such topics as ‘Riding the Terrain Park,’ ‘How to Ski Powder with Mark Hansen, Grand Targhee’s Ski and Snowboard School Director,’ ‘Tips for Skiers on New Parabolic and Fat Skis,’ ‘Telemark Tips,’ ‘Skiing and Riding for Powder Hounds,’ localized content like ‘Lost Groomers, Patrol and Instructor Chutes’ audio guides, ‘Kids Fun Zone’ audio guides, etc. Through Skicasting we made available more for guests and listeners than instructional downloads. We gave them direct, no charge access to independent music through our relationship with Adam Curry’s Podsafe Music Network (http://music.podshow.com/) allowing users to customize personal playlists along with audio tours of the resort alongside brief audio mentions of on-mountain activities, restaurant specials, scheduled seminars, gear critiques, and event updates.

Additionally, we encouraged our guests to create their own Skicasts for distribution through our website to friends and family, all means of extending our brand around the world and capitalizing on the viral capability of podcasts, email and the Web. Our Skicasts are also formatted for play on such portable media devices as the new Sony PSP platform. The key to Skicasting’s subscriber growth lies in our ability to ensure our programs are relevant and fresh and that they maintain the independent spirit of the podcasting medium. With our initiatives, we are striving to blend corporate brand identity with an honest, independent message.

So What:

The beauty of leveraging podcasting technology to enhance our online and offline marketing tactics is that it is highly measurable. Bottom Line Results:

Grand Targhee Resort has identified our Skicasts as the leading driver of their drastic increase in unique website visits by over 60% for the 2005-2006 winter ski season. Our objective was 20%.

Skicasts contributed substantially to an increase in our lodging bookings conversion rate for the 2005-2006 winter season to a lodging increase in bookings of over 20% versus prior year. Remember, our objective was 2%.

After the first 10 weeks of Skicasting, Grand Targhee’s Skicast generated a combined total of 15,364 Skicast subscribers who listened regularly to the episodes which came out every 2 weeks.

At launch of the first Skicast in November, 2005, we generated 2,077 subscribers with a sustained weekly average audience of 1,536 over the next 10 weeks.

These subscriber numbers put the Grand Targhee Skicast in the top 100 podcasts in the world out of well over 10,000.

The vast majority of downloads were from people using iTunes 6.0.1 software with a very even split between PC and Mac users.

The power of our Skicasts are that they engage our audience on a consistent basis and extend our Grand Targhee Resort brand message in addition to building a rapport between our on-mountain resort personalities featured in the Skicasts and our guests and prospective guests.

Now What:

As we begin our comprehensive marketing planning for the upcoming 2006-2007 winter season at Grand Targhee Resort, we are looking, of course, to greatly enhance the Skicast programming and content in addition to encouraging greater audience participation in our programming content. In addition, we strive to make it possible for resort guests to “check out” digital video cameras and iRiver mp3 recorders from our Activity Center on-mountain and record their personal ski/board/snowcat powder adventures of the day and edit and distribute their personal Skicasts to friends and family all over the world, right from our base village edit suite.