Every April, Ski Area Management drops their annual Best and Worst in Marketing feature, and half the industry pretends not to care while quietly reading every word. I’m in the other half — the half that reads it with coffee and a yellow highlighter.
The 2025-26 edition just landed. And it got me thinking about how I’d actually hand out the hardware myself. Let’s carve through what good marketing really looked like this season.
The Problem With “Best” in Ski Marketing
Most marketing awards go to the campaign that was most visible, most produced, or most expensive. Those take real resources and real creative talent — I’m not dismissing them. But I’ve spent enough time in quiet marketing ops to know that the work actually moving lift ticket sales rarely wins trophies.
I’ve been watching segmentation this season. Not “we sent a newsletter” — but “we sent a genuinely different message to destination guests than to day-trip locals and our open rates reflect that decision.” I’ve personally seen behavioral segmentation push email open rates from the high teens into the low thirties. That’s not glamorous. It doesn’t land in a trade magazine. But it fills chairs on a Tuesday in February.
What I’d Actually Give Awards For This Season
I’d give Gold to any resort that built a real guest loyalty program and can actually show you the retention data behind it. Eagle Point’s community-first strategy is the kind of thinking that earns this — not because it’s flashy, but because it compounds.
Silver goes to any resort that ran an email with a subject line that was just… honest. I know that sounds like a low bar. Real information, no countdown-timer manipulation, no “last chance” hyperbole on a Tuesday in March. Refreshingly rare and strangely effective.
I’d hand Bronze to any marketing team that integrated AI in a way that made their guest communication more human, not less. The resorts using AI to deepen the human connection are playing a different game than the ones using it to churn out more template emails.
Honorable mention: any Ikon partner resort that ignored the “Seek Unique” template and wrote something actually original. The irony of a differentiation campaign delivered through identical emails is a hill I’ll die on every time.
The Metric Nobody’s Awarding
Retention. Not open rates. Not follower counts. Not even ticket volume for the season. The real question: did the guests who came once come back? Did they bring someone? The NSAA has been making the case for guest loyalty programs for years — and I’d argue most resorts still have it on the whiteboard rather than in their email platform.
A campaign that gets someone on hill once is rad — I’ve run plenty of those. A brand story that makes them come back three winters in a row? That’s the gnarly one. I’d argue SAM’s annual issue is the best forcing function we have: what did we actually do this season that will matter next season?
What’s the marketing move your resort made this season that you’re most proud of — even if nobody gave you an award for it? That’s the debrief question worth putting on the agenda.
