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.

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.