Transcript:
Nathan Rafferty: [00:00:05] For me, the greatest snow on earth is like Kleenex and facial tissue. Right? It's synonymous. And we, as long as I'm at Ski Utah, we will never move away from the greatest snow on earth.
Adam Stoker: [00:00:20] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. We are back for the second time here, live at the Utah Tourism Conference. Really exciting to be here live at this event. And it's always fun to kind of get together with the different professionals here in the industry and understand the latest of what's happening. And I couldn't talk about the Utah tourism industry without talking to Nathan Rafferty who's been on the show before. He's the President and CEO of Ski Utah. Nathan, welcome to the show.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:00:51] Hi Adam. How you doing?
Adam Stoker: [00:00:52] I'm great. Happy to be here.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:00:54] I'm excited to be here too in cool Vernal Utah.
Adam Stoker: [00:00:57] Pretty amazing, Vernal is a place that I think a lot of people associate with oil business, things like that. The tourism economy here in vernal has really flourished over the last seven or eight years.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:01:09] Yeah. And I've been coming through here, and here as a kid and always have enjoyed Vernal and kind of a unique aspect of dinosaurs and what they've got going on here. I love it.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:22] Yeah. Do you know, it's DinoLand and that's the center. The thing that I enjoy the most is every year I try to bring my girls down and we do a little rafting trip down the Green River and it's just been so fun.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:01:32] I haven't done the rafting. The venue for that event last night was super cool. And then what I have done out here a little bit, is some mountain biking and-
Adam Stoker: [00:01:40] Oh mountain biking is really good.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:01:42] It is.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:43] Yeah
Nathan Rafferty: [00:01:44] I got out yesterday for a little bit, it was awesome.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:46] Well, you've got to come back and do the rafting trip because the canyon walls are just massive and its views you can't get anywhere else.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:01:53] Yeah, bet.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:54] Yeah. Well, let's talk about Ski Utah, Nathan. Tell me the latest. I mean we're obviously preparing for some changes in our economic times and things like that and I think everybody's looking forward a little bit. What do you expect for the ski season this year?
Nathan Rafferty: [00:02:06] Nothing but good stuff. We've had two record years in the last two years which has been fantastic. I say that and I also acknowledge that the last couple of years are kind of throw-away years in terms of comp sets looking at traditional visitation patterns because –
Adam Stoker: [00:02:27] It’s not like we're pulling trends and projecting for the next 10 years, right?
Nathan Rafferty: [00:02:30] Yeah, no. People are saying, “Hey, we're a little softer than we were last year.” Well these last two years with COVID have just been so out of whack with reality, we're very, very fortunate that we operate a business that was a safe way to interact with friends and family. You're outside on a chairlift with the wind blowing and felt- the resorts worked really, really hard to make a safe environment for people to be able to connect and in the winter time in Utah a lot of times people are indoors and so a lot of them fled to the outdoors, which was great, a big advantage for us and we were really grateful that we were able to offer that opportunity to a lot of people and it meant for good business.
Different business, we sold a lot of lift tickets, did not do a lot of food and beverage and that kind of thing. But the core business was great and I think people were happy and grateful that they had that possibility to go do that.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:33] You expect then a third strong winter here in a row or do you think it's going to soften up a little bit?
Nathan Rafferty: [00:03:38] No, we're expecting it to be really strong again. And these last two years were record years for us with lower-than-average snowfall and those things don't happen together. Every record we've had in the last 80 years of doing business of commercial skiing in Utah, record years coincide with really good snowfall, it's just the way our business works and so gosh, if we would have a good snow here, things could be really, really good for us and what we're looking forward to is having a little bit more normalcy. So hoping our labor situation is a little bit better, which will help and being able to offer everything we are accustomed to offering especially food and beverage.
Adam Stoker: [00:04:21] Awesome. Well I feel like if it's going to be, whether it's a strong snow year or a soft snow year, you're always trying new unique marketing tactics, whether that's your creative campaign or whether that's digital tactics, what are you doing from a marketing standpoint right now that you feel like is going to basically hedge as well as you can against it if there was an economic change?
Nathan Rafferty: [00:04:42] Yeah. You know, we really rely on hanging our hat on two important aspects and they're really not that new and unique other than maybe we look at different ways to catch these but greatest snow on earth and ease of access. And so when we look at why people come to ski in Utah, it's those two things. We’re easy to get to and we have very consistent snowfall. So you can debate all day what the best snow in the world is. We really do have it actually, but for us, it's all about consistency and letting people know through various different messaging techniques that they can expect that in Utah and I think the visitation that we've had over the last couple of years, the secrets out.
Really now it's about managing that guest experience and so many tourism destinations have seen big upticks and it's hard to, hard to kind of keep up with that from a transportation and infrastructure standpoint sometimes, so managing that experience is really where we're focused.
Adam Stoker: [00:05:50] Yeah, I love that you mentioned the consistency that goes along with your creative. I mean I also believe that Utah has the greatest snow on earth, but in all reality, the branding has been so good over the years with that very consistent messaging even on the license plates, greatest snow on earth that most people that think skiing are going to associate it with Utah snow because of the repetition of that message. I think you guys have done a good job of sticking with that and not trying to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of reinventing the wheel.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:06:19] Yeah, and you're a marketing guy. So I think you understand this more than anybody. So many people in the marketing space have Attention Deficit Disorder when it comes to marketing and messaging like, “We got to change it, we got to change it, we got to change it.” For me, the greatest snow on earth is like Kleenex and facial tissue. Right? It's synonymous and we, as long as I'm at ski Utah, we will never move away from the greatest snow on earth. That's what makes us different and I will defend to my dying day, the greatest snow on earth on our license plates because everybody knows if it's on the license plate, it must be true. Right?
Adam Stoker: [00:07:01] That's right. That's right. But, but I think you're talking about a very important marketing principle that I think I'd love all my listeners to listen very closely to and that's just because you are sick of it because you've seen it so many times does not mean that the diminishing returns have set in yet. I would not change a successful marketing campaign until I started seeing diminishing returns in the results. And just because you're tired of it, that's not enough to change it.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:07:29] And there are different ways to talk about the greatest snow on earth and what makes it the greatest and why is that important? Why is soft, consistent snow better for somebody's vacation? Is it too much snow? Does that mean it's going to be snowing all the time when people are here? Some people are scared of powder snow, but because it can be harder to ski. But what we talk about is how it just makes the experience so much better whether you're skiing on freshly groomed fresh snow and that how many sunny days we get here and it's not cold and gray and snowing the whole time, we're just lucky that we get these big powder dumps fairly consistent and when it's not snowing, it's sunny.
Adam Stoker: [00:08:09] I love it. Well, Farmers’ Almanac and you mentioned this in the OT meeting yesterday. “Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a heavy snow year,” is that correct?
Nathan Rafferty: [00:08:16] We're going with it. I honestly, I never look at- only when the Farmers’ Almanac says it's going to snow, we pay attention to the Farmers’ Almanac. If it says that it's not going to snow, we just say it's a bunch of malarkey. We're marketing people right, at the end of the day. I don't pay a lot of attention to the long-term forecast, Utah has been known to have consistent and relatively deep snowfall for forever. So we're going to stick with that.
Adam Stoker: [00:08:47] Well, I hope that this year, maybe not every year, but this year the Farmers’ Almanac is correct.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:08:51] Let's hope and we need it to come, or it’s not how much you get, it's when it comes too. So we'd love it to come early, kind of set that tone for the whole season and be off and around.
Adam Stoker: [00:09:02] Great. If people want to learn more about Ski Utah, Nathan, what's the best way for them to do so?
Nathan Rafferty: [00:09:07] Skiutah.com is our website address and then of course you can find us on all the social channels as well.
Adam Stoker: [00:09:14] Great. Nathan, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
Nathan Rafferty: [00:09:17] Thanks. Adam.
[End of transcript]
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