More snow sports enthusiasts are surfing before they ski
Skiers and snowboarders are increasingly hitting the Web before they hit the slopes.
Skiers spend about 14 hours per week on the Internet; snowboarders, generally a younger group, 17 hours per week, said Alicia Allen, consumer marketing manager for SnowSports Industries America. That compares with four hours per week for the average Web surfer, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, an Internet audience measurement service.
Last year 7.4 million Americans spent at least one day skiing, and 5.6 million spent a day snowboarding, Allen said.
Any way you add it up, that’s a lot of hours on the Internet. Marketers of ski products have created a plethora of resources for this connected audience.
“Sixty-five percent of our visitors say they book travel online, research destinations, resorts and gear, check weather reports and snow conditions and validate those conditions with our mountain cams,” said Doug Sabanosh, associate editor of Mountain Sports Interactive, the publisher of Skimag.com and Skiingmag.com, the official Web sites of Ski Magazine and Skiing Magazine. Each site had about 800,000 visitors in 2002.
Rather than relying on a generic search engine such as Google, skiers looking for a central location for links to snow sport Web pages might start at www.skicentral.com. It has grown from a small index of several hundred sites in fall 1995 to a compendium of more than 8,000 sites. The home page is broken into eight main categories, such as resorts, travel and lodging, to help refine searches. Nearly 2 million snow sport enthusiasts visited the site last season, making it among the most visited snow sport sites on the Web.
Though millions are hitting the slopes every year, growth in their numbers has been stagnant. To help remedy that, last month SnowSports Industries America launched www.snowlinkjr.com, aimed at kids 4 to 12.
“Kids are where the future of the sport is, and we want to get them young so they become a lifetime participant,” Allen said. The site is a marketing effort by the snow sports industry, but it also has an altruistic mission: to help combat youth obesity by encouraging kids to participate in winter sports.
Skiing can be expensive exercise, though. A three-day pass at Vail, Colo., for instance, purchased 14 days in advance, is $201, or $67 a day; it’s $219, or $73 a day, purchased at the window.
“That’s a hurdle that we’re going to continue to face to get first-time people out on the slopes,” Allen said. She recommends www.kidznsnow.com for cost-saving resources for families, including a section on hot deals and another on programs where kids ski free.
Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz all have ski package deals, some of which include passes. I found a package on Orbitz at Vail for four adults in a two-bedroom condo for $429 per person for four nights, including three days of lift tickets but not including airfare. It seemed a good deal considering the $201 cost of the lift ticket alone.
If you have made your plans and just want to check on snow conditions before heading to the slopes, many resorts now have Web cameras that give you a visual. Sabanosh of Skimag.com recommends www.rsn.com.
On the Web
Used in researching this story:
www.expedia.com
www.kidznsnow.com
www.orbitz.com
www.rsn.com
www.skicentral.com
www.skiingmag.com
www.skimag.com
www.snowlink.com
www.snowlinkjr.com
www.travelocity.com
James Gilden can be reached at www.theinternettraveler.com.
