One of the things we found out about our club was that most people did not know a lot about our website other than to sign up and pay for trips. We have an extensive website (https://www.uppercapeskiclub.com) where you can post a classified ad, review the past history of club fly trips, watch club videos, or even look at more than 72 webcams from major resorts around the world. We are beginning an educational email program to inform our members of all the things they can do on our website because of this survey result. People were much more adven- turous in their travel aspect than we had believed before the survey. They wanted to go all over the place, including Alaska and Europe, even to South America to ski, and most wanted to go for at least 10 days, some even longer. This was a surprising result as our club is very cost- conscious — or so we thought before the survey.

Another revelation was that almost everyone wants a hot tub, with a pool being a close second. We knew this intuitively and the survey confirmed it. Last, many wanted to further explore a bicycle and barge trip to Europe like we had done earlier in the season. So survey away and remember to combine that with any information you can gather off of your website. Demographics will play a major role as the members in your club age. A skier with aging knees may eventually leave the club, but if you offer other activities such as a bike and barge trip or a kayak trip, they may return to the club to travel and play with their longtime friends at the ski club, even if they no longer ski.

A few words on the survey itself. Some people will take it to heart and give you thorough answers if you provide space for them to write their thoughts. Others just want to choose A, B or C and be done with it. Be careful how you word your questions or you will get back useless information. Remember to use the K.I.S.S. principle; “keep it simple stupid”, and you will get back meaningful results. Limit your survey to no more than 20 questions or people won’t fill them out. Before having your members fill it out, try your survey on fellow board members to discover any weaknesses and then make corrections to it. As for the timing of when to survey, we conducted a survey at our an- nual season finale dinner in April before the meal was served. The results took several nights of tabulating, but some definite trends emerged. Using the survey information you can fine-tune your trip and event offerings to better target and more importantly please your membership. Happy members will spread the word and help your club grow and prosper.

Here are some interesting things that I learned from this experience:

* You can renew and update your passport in a 24-hour period, but it will cost you $299 plus the inconvenience.

* You can book another flight once you get a new passport, but the airline is going to charge you at least $200 for changing the flight.

* The agent at Delta told me on the telephone that, if they had permitted me to board the plane, the airline could have been fined as much as $32,000 by the FAA.

* And, if I had been allowed to fly to Europe with the “expired” passport and something happened to me, the U.S. Embassy would have no record of my being in France as my passport would have been considered invalid.

* As of this writing, my claim to Travel Guard Insurance Company has also been denied as they do not consider passport issues. Only serious illness and death are considered as valid excuses for a claim. I learned a lot from this episode and, hopefully, my experience can help educate other people. The lesson here is to check your passport expiration dates before you sign up for that next trip to another country — plus know and understand the rules.

If you are a secret society and want to keep your nefarious doings quiet, you need to make sure than strangers do not know how to access your information. If you are a terrorist organization, you certainly need what you are doing kept a secret from strangers and probably law enforcement..

But if you are a ski club that’s trying to sell ski trips, you need to maximize the number of folks — members and potential members — that can find out about your ski trips and social events. Keeping that information secret is counter-productive. Keeping that in mind, why would a ski club require their members to remember a password to find out where happy hour is being held this week or to get details on the club’s trip to Aspen or Whistler? Would you believe that we have seen ski club websites that do not even identify in what city or state they are located?

Let’s face it, passwords are certainly appropriate for keeping financial records private or if your job is to keep the Coca-Cola formula a secret — but for selling anything to anybody, passwords to find out your timing and pricing is counterproductive and can cost you lost sales.

Nor should your officers’ identities be kept a secret. I know that some people are worried that their officers might get unsolicited phone calls, emails from total strangers, or direct mail advertising if their identity is known to non-members — but those strangers might be trying to show the club a new resort in Italy or even in India and the phone call may be from someone trying to find out details about a ski trip and wishing to join your club.

Also, if you hold an office in a club that is trying to sell something, it is probably advisable to have prospective buyers be able to ask a question of the officers without disclosing their name or intention. I am familiar with a real estate company that’s outselling their competition in a southeast U.S. city partly because they do not insist on the inquiring party leaving their contact information — whereas their competition will not even let people see photos of the interior of the properties advertised until the prospective buyer tells them who you are and where they can receive a follow-up sales call. Most prospective buyers want to inquire anonymously until they get the facts — and they certainly don’t want to set up a password that they will probably not remember 30 days later anyway.

Ski clubs should be open as to their leadership, what they are selling, what kind of social events and trips they host, and what kind of folks they are seeking to become members. We are not, and should not be, confused with secret societies.

The past three decades have been great! I have skied and written about more than 200 ski resorts in North America, another 200 European ski resorts — and a half-dozen resorts in both Japan and in New Zealand. I’ve traveled to and writen about touring destinations in Morroco, Turkey, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Belize, Spain, plus Peru’s Macchu Picchu, the Outback and Great Barrier Reef of Australia, Yellowstone in winter, whitewater trips in Utah, Texas, and Colorado, and cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Prague, Rome, Amsterdam, London, Zurich, Athens, Sydney, Aukland, Vancouver, Quebec, New York, San Francisco, and many others.

My plan is to publish the March and May 2016 issues, continue researching content for next season’s issues, and to seek a buyer for the magazine who will continue publishing The National Ski Club Newsletter and its Newsflash email beginning with the November 2016 issue. We’ll see how that plan works out.

*Set up a summer barbecue.
* Discover and lead an interesting tour.
*Hold a holiday party for club members.
*Take photos and share them with members.
* Arrange lunches, happy hours, or dinners.
*Participate in club activities.
* Assist trip leaders when on a club activity.
*Lead trips and activities.
* Invite people to join the ski club.
* Help with matters in your expertise.
* Ski, drink, and mingle with new members.
* Assist the officers in their tasks.
* Run for office.
* Volunteer for a committee or activity.
* Arrange for a program at club meetings.
*Write an article for the newsletter.
* Provide photographs for the newsletter.
* Help with the ski club’s council.
* Lead or work with our charitable activities.
* Lead active events like hiking, padeling, golf, bike ride, or tennis.
* Race with the club.
* Introduce members to cross-country skiing.

The training started November 15 with almost 300 people in attendance, including Big Sky Fire Department, Summit Air Ambulance, Gallatin Gateway Fire Department, American Medical Response, Bozeman Health Group, and other local medical, EMS, and fire agencies. “Although the Big Sky Medical Refresher is focused on our ski patrollers, it is also a multi-agency effort that shares experience and builds relationships,” remarked Steve Emerson, of the Big Sky Resort Ski Patrol who said, “It’s so important for such a large organization to get our members together to bring everyone up to speed on our standard of care. “The medical refreshers we conduct are required training for our members, but also count as continuing education to go toward their license renewal.”

The practical skill stations have training on backboard mobilization, medical patient assessment, CPR, and more.

Ski clubs should keep their memberships occupied during the summer as well as the five months of the ski season. Your older members are probably retiring, with time on their hands and a desire to go somewhere in the summer and fall and their ski clubs has shown them the pleasures of traveling with a group of friends — and then we introduced them to some folks who ski and travel and they loved the concept.

This often extends beyond the club to sub-groups who have been skiing and/or traveling together since the 1970’s. Some still ski with the club and some do not, but the sub-group started with traveling with “the club”.

Perhaps initially they joined the club because skiing was not an easy trip to organize from their home town or they wished to save money on ski trips or they wanted to find some friends with whom they could ski. But today, it is often just a matter of skiing with those friends that resulted from joining a ski club 20, 30, or even 40 years ago. They are not as concerned about the price of ski trips and tourism. That’s what retirement savings are for. They may have knees, ankles, or whatever that don’t work like they used to so they will enjoy a river cruise in Europe as their big vacation next year instead of skiing. So, if you want to keep that member around and traveling with the club, offer them a trip to Europe in the summer or fall. Show them Machu Picchu or drive to Colorado’s Mesa Verde (North America’s version of a much less developed Machu Picchu — the entire area is covered with little seen evidence of native Americans 1,200 years ago! Take care of those aging members for they are usually the backbone of your club.

But also pay attention to those younger skiers and travelers. They are the future of the club. Search out less expensive ski trips to less glamorous resorts — perhaps staying in nearby motels or nearby cities from which you can launch ski expeditions. Many of the 30-year olds simply cannot afford a $1,700 ski trip but would be excited to go to smaller resorts for a week — or perhaps even a long weekend of skiing. Give them that opportunity and start attracting some younger members.

And don’t forget the things that used to make the summer so much fun when we were young; happy hours, picnics, volleyball on Wednesday nights, camp outs, boating outings, etc. Keep trying to attract our old and finding some new folks to join our clubs.

Many U.S. ski clubs are changing their names to ski and adventure club or ski and travel club and even those clubs that have not changed their name are taking more and more non-ski trips. Cruises, bike and barge trips, safaris to Africa, scuba trips to Australia or Belize are becoming common among America’s ski clubs. That change is creating the second stage of U.S. ski clubs. Our members are still active and like to vacation together. Most of our members still ski and those who don’t ski are still doing active things when they go on vacation, like snowshoeing and X-C skiing in the winter or bicycling during the summer.

I suppose stage three will be laying out on some beach or sitting in an expensive spa somewhere, but I don’t see too many ski clubs running those kind of trips at this time. Perhaps that day will come — but not yet. Ski resorts and tour operators shouldn’t count ski clubs out of the picture. We are changing, most of our kids are adults now, and some of us are retired — but we have not left the vacation scene. Resorts should cater to those changes if they want to keep ski clubs as profitable clients. Keep selling us ski trips — but include some less strenuous activities two or three days of the week. Start showing America’s ski clubs what’s at your resort during the summer and fall if you don’t do so already. Yes, we’re getting older and some of us can’t ski full speed six days a week. That spa might just look good to some members on Friday and riding snowmobiles on Wednesday is starting to look inviting, too.

Clubs and tour operators should pay more attention to non-ski trips; the Texas Ski Council is already spending more money on non-ski trips than ski trips — but they are still taking four large ski trips per year. It’s just that summer and fall are also looking good these days — largely because many members are now empty nesters, some are retired, and most have lots more time (and more money) to travel year-round. Ski clubs, ski resorts, and tour operators all need to recognize those facts and cater to the not so new older segment of the American ski club market, because that’s where the market is going folks.

Vermont’s Hermitage Club
The $75 million Hermitage Club, (formally Haystack Mountain Resort) is the only private ski resort in the east. Initial cost is $65,000, plus $5,150 annual dues. Begun in 2011, membership is capped at 1,500, and is now 750 member-families. The club packages skiing with fine dining, luxury lodging, and year-round recreation including an 18-hole golf course and a covered ski lift with heated seats — all just a 3.5-hour drive from New York City.
It’s located in the towns of West Dover and Wilmington, to complement the small-town, historic flavor of the Deerfield Valley. After crossing a truss-and-lattice covered bridge at the club’s entrance, families encounter a resort with a 1842 country inn, folks skating on a pond, and gliding over the snow in a horse-drawn sleigh. In winter, there’s snowmobiling on the mountain after dark, traveling to a mountaintop cabin by Sno-Cat for fine dining, and a 5,000-bottle wine cellar.
The master plan for the club includes more than 100 homes, a $15 million hotel, and a $3 million airport expansion to accommodate the majority of the private jets of the members. A $21 million, 80,000-square-foot Club House has 14 spa and treatment rooms, a movie theater, and an edit suite for GoPro helmet cams — where skiers and boarders can edit footage they’ve recorded on runs and post it on social media.

Colorado’s Cimarron Mountain Club
Membership in Colorado’s new Cimarron Mountain Club are available but just 12 people get to buy into the resort. starting at almost $4 million each. Denver attorney John Aronstein has owned 2,000 acres on the north slope of the Colorado San Juan Mountains since 2002, but now plans to develop his personal winter playground into the most exclusive ski and snowboard mountain in the West. So far, more than 60 trails have been cut along a 2-1/2 mile ridge off 11,453-foot Castle Rock peak. There are a few beginner trails, but it’s mostly chutes, couloirs, and steep glades on 1,600 vertical feet on the north end of the mountain slope.
Access to the skiing terrain will be via unlimited Snocat rides for members and snowmobiles, which is the only way into the dozen multi-million-dollar homes to be built on the property. Home site prices range from $2.7 million to $3.8 million, and annual dues start at $50,000.

Or You Can Rent Utah’s Eagle Point Resort
For the less-wealty who still want to ski on a private mountain, for $10,000 per day, Eagle Point Resort in southwest Utah will, rent the whole ski hill for up to 200 guests any Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday this ski season — equipment rentals included! About 40 cabins and condos are available at additional cost and the 12,000 square-foot Canyonside Lodge is available for parties, meetings, and entertainment.

1. Tell members what is coming up next in the club and how much fun the last activity was so that they might try a similar activity in the future.

2. Tell prospective members just how much fun being a member of your ski club can be. Most ski clubs do a good job telling their members what’s happened and what is going to happen, but many ski clubs don’t use their website to sell the club to prospective members.

Ski club websites can be a powerful recruiting tool if used correctly.