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Development of Weather Science & Snow Marketing

Fair Wages

Booting up
Skier
Joined
Mar 24, 2016
Posts
64
On November 18, 2009 The Summit Daily published
Berwyn: Has weather science been hijacked for marketing?

Pretty sure this was before the days of Joel Gratz's OpenSnow.com, video snow stakes, over night (as opposed to just 24 hour) snow totals at the biggest resorts and multiple live webcams. In his story, reporter Bob Berwyn wrote the following:

I appreciate the industry's efforts to spur business, but as a weather geek, I'm also uncomfortable with the apparent disingenuousness in some of these efforts...Plus, your customers are going to learn the truth soon enough, especially in the era of social media.
...
I sometimes wonder whether the ski industry wouldn't benefit more from being completely transparent about weather and snowfall with its customers.


Given the success of OpenSnow.com and the number of people checking online snow reports and web cams.has the industry benefited from Berwyn's thoughts?
 

Core2

Making fresh tracks
Skier
Joined
Nov 29, 2015
Posts
1,848
Location
AZ
I think resorts are just starting to realize the power of those webcams and strategic social media posts. Those things are having more and more of an impact every season. I know I have decided whether or not to ski by what I see on the webcam at 6 AM. People need data to make decisions, you give them the data and they will come. This is the new reality.

What is funny is there are still exceptions to that rule, holdouts to the old ways. Wolf Creek for instance does not give a single sh*t about any sort of social media presence and half the time their single webcam does not work. They are still doing good business from what I hear.
 

Tricia

The Velvet Hammer
Admin
SkiTalk Tester
Joined
Nov 1, 2015
Posts
27,297
Location
Reno
I think resorts are just starting to realize the power of those webcams and strategic social media posts. Those things are having more and more of an impact every season. I know I have decided whether or not to ski by what I see on the webcam at 6 AM. People need data to make decisions, you give them the data and they will come. This is the new reality.

What is funny is there are still exceptions to that rule, holdouts to the old ways. Wolf Creek for instance does not give a single sh*t about any sort of social media presence and half the time their single webcam does not work. They are still doing good business from what I hear.
Its amazing how the web cams come up in conversations with friends.

Did you see the......
 

crgildart

Gravity Slave
Skier
Joined
Nov 12, 2015
Posts
16,321
Location
The Bull City
Chance of measurable snow tomorrow in the Carolinas. Today's forecast brought to you by Food Lion..


snow%2017.jpg


Coincidence?
By the way, 9 times out of ten there is no snow.. But every time inclement winter weather is mentioned in the forecast they ALWAYS plug a local grocery store as "brought to you by.." at the end of the forecast segment.
 

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