Looking through a recent survey from Le Ski, I was struck by one stat in particular. While it was encouraging to read that the number of UK skiers and snowboarders is predicted to grow by 14% in winter 2023/24, the fact that only 13% stay in catered chalets highlighted how...
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is changing fast. A few years ago, it was just the name of one of Steven Spielberg’s less good movies, but in 2023 AI has moved from the world of ‘futurologists’ into the mainstream. The chances are that even if you haven’t tried ChatGPT (or Google’s ‘Bard’),...
Iain’s article ‘Parrots in the Snow: the rise and fall of Bladon Lines‘ has now been published in ‘Ski+Board’ magazine. It’s also now available as a special episode of The Ski Podcast My first experience of working in the ski industry came 35 years ago when I went to Chatel...
Iain from Skipedia recently went ski touring in Morocco. Flying into Marrakech, and then travelling to Imlil (1740m), Iain then spent three nights at the Refuge des Mouflons (3207m), ski touring to different 4000m peaks. Ski hire was from Braemar Mountain Sports, guiding and logistics were organised by Toubkal Guide. You...
These are difficult days for the ESF in the UK. The current legal cases against Simon Butler and Le Ski have stirred up plenty of negative sentiment within the British market against the ESF. Both cases – which deal with different aspects of the law – are currently at different...
Okay, not strictly anything to do with marketing, but just for fun… So why do chalet girls bake a cake every day? As far as I know chalets have always left out a cake for their guests to tuck into for ‘afternoon tea’. After a long day on the slopes,...
The French are bigger than we are. So are the Americans. But does size matter? And to be specific, how big is ours? We speak, of course, of the size of the UK snowsports market. No more Crystal Industry Report In recent years the Crystal Ski Industry Report has always been the starting point for...
It’s been a great week for snowsports content marketing campaigns. We’ve already written about the viral France Montagnes video, but we have also been impressed with Snow+Rock’s #urbanmountains campaign. Great data visualisation The campaign cleverly combines data about some of the highest mountains in the world and represents them in the context of London Underground stations:...
If you’ve been scrolling through Facebook in the last couple of days, you’ll probably have seen this great video from France Montagnes – currently going viral across the Internet. Overheard in Ski Resorts ‘Overheard in French Ski Resorts’ plays on the well-trodden meme previous seen in ‘Shit Snowboarders Say’ etc but crucially manages to be...
Just over a week ago, the Freeze Big Air Festival planned for the Olympic stadium in Stratford, London was announcing Nile Rodgers and Chic as their headline act. Yesterday they confirmed on Twitter – one month before the event – that it will not take place at all: We announce the postponement of Freeze...
We were impressed with Crystal Ski’s recent video ‘The Mountain is Yours‘, released last week. Filmed in Hintertux in April 2015, the short film depicts five amusing ski stereotypes: the Mile Muncher, the Gadget Guru, the Piste Princess, the Park Rat and the Apres Animal. Crystal staff, rather than models Rather than using models,...
42 years ago it all started at the Chelsea Horticultural Society, but this year’s London Ski & Snowboard Show will be the first in many years not to be held in either Earls Court or Olympia. We asked the Suzanne Bayliss, Marketing Manager for the Show, about how the organisers have managed the change and...
