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.

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.

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.