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September 27, 2004
Telski Anticipates A Record Season
Under the new ownership of Chuck and Chad Horning, executives at the Telluride Ski and Golf Co. say they are quietly laying the groundwork for what could be a record-breaking ski season. But in just a few months, the fruits of their labors over the past few months will become highly visible.
In October, and at a cost of over $100,000, both Ski and Skiing magazines will feature a seven page “advertorial” headlined “Fantasy Mountain Does Exist.” The two magazines have a combined circulation of upwards of 750,000. The spread will introduce Telski’s new approach to advertising, jettisoning Cellphone Sam and his ersatz storybook cronies in favor of ads that return to the tried-and-true message of Telluride as a place of unparalleled beauty, expressed in the tag line “a world unto itself.”
The spread plays off of a feature article that Ski ran last year in which a ski mountain planner imagined the ideal ski mountain and the ideal ski town. The fantasy mountain in that article, said Telski VP for Sales and Marketing Pete Woods, looked a lot like Telluride.
But the splashy reintroduction of Telluride as a kind of skiers’ paradise is just the start of an overall marketing campaign aimed at producing over 400,000 skier days. (That compares to 367,000 skier days last year, and 380,000 in 1998-99, Telski’s record year.) In addition to careful plans, said Telski Chief Executive Officer Ray Jacobi in an interview this week, there are early indications that this winter will be strong.
In this still-young selling season, season pass sales are up five percent over last year at this time. Group sales, another key early economic indicator, are also up enough for Jacobi to confidently predict that the company will hit its goal of 32,000 skier days from group sales, up from 28,000 last year and 13,000 the year before.
Telski has also announced new pricing aimed at combating the impression that Telluride is pricier than other resorts, has announced the opening of a superpipe and new hike-in terrain under Palmyra Peak, is aggressively marketing new nonstop jet service from Los Angeles, and is kicking off the season by hosting the Jeep King of the Mountain competition on Thanksgiving week.
“We guarantee the slopes will be white at Thanksgiving,” Jacobi said, counting on snowmaking to compensate for any shortfall from the clouds. The early ski competition will afford Telluride national exposure on CBS early in the season.
And if it fails to snow or, as it was a couple of years back, is too warm to blow snow? “Sometimes you’ve got to roll the dice,” Jacobi grinned. “If there’s no risk, there’s no reward.”
Other Telski initiatives that Jacobi cited include merging the Telski website and the Telluride and Mountain Village Convention and Visitors Bureau website, an early example of Telski’s new emphasis on “marketing the resort,” rather than focusing its energies on winter tourism; and a season-long series of afternoon concerts at Gorrono. The company is also putting energy into building the second full week of January into a full-fledged “college week,” enticing students whose classes have not yet resumed to ski together here in Telluride. There is already one group of over one thousand students booked for that week.
“We’re pretty excited,” Jacobi said. “We’re hoping that the community is feeling that the Jacobi-Horning approach is to focus on the short- and long-term needs of all the parties involved.”
In the short-term, he said, Telski has recently made over $3 million in capital investments, including over $1 million on the golf course this summer, three new snowcats, ten snowmobiles, and the new superpipe machine.
This summer was the first opportunity to test Jacobi’s proposition that Telski’s underutilized assets should be made more accessible. The company gained over two thousand new rounds of golf, he said, primarily through its program of offering discounted twilight and sunset golf, open not just to golf club members but to the general public. The course’s notorious hole 10 is being rebuilt, and the company bought new golf carts and installed a GPS system in them this summer.
Opening things up through aggressive pricing will continue this winter. Telski has announced three new pricing options: a $69 season pass for children six- to 12-years old, with no blackout dates; transferable five-packs of lift tickets for just $175 (no blackout dates); and, what may be the most innovative of all, a “limitless lesson pass” for just $149 for the season (some date restrictions).
“We have this big, beautiful mountain that is just 45 percent utilized,” Jacobi explained. “So we don’t gain anything from restrictive pricing.”
If the pricing and the ad campaign are aimed at drawing families and reassuring intermediates, Telski is not ignoring the expert skier, and has announced the opening of Mountain Quail, accessible after a half hour hike from the top of Lift 10 from the highest point the Prospect Ridge. Access to the 1,100-feet of steep vertical will be via guided tours only, following a safety orientation, with skiers outfitted with beacons and shovels. There will be special locals’ days, Woods said, at greatly reduced rates.
Likewise, the new Superpipe will enable Telski to host major competitions, with an added benefit of providing training for homegrown competitors, Woods pointed out.
Woods also expressed optimism regarding the new direct flight from L.A.
“Historically, Southern California has accounted for 5.6 percent of our skier days, and that’s without a nonstop option,” Woods said. “We have the capacity there to grow.” Telski has tested its marketing efforts promoting its new products in L.A., Woods said, and is deploying the campaign there and in other cities with nonstop direct flights to Telluride and Montrose.
Long term, Jacobi said, the goal of the ski company and community alike has to be sustainability.
“People may think that Telski has been a profitable entity,” he said.
“It is not. It will be one day.” As for this season, “barring unforeseen international events, it looks like it will be good.”
Posted by Adam at September 27, 2004 12:51 PM