Skipedia

The sad demise of the catered chalet ski holiday

by iain on Sep 25, 2023 • 8 Comments

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...

Ideas

Will ChatGPT make ‘ski experts’ redundant?

by iain on May 11, 2023 • No Comments

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 / Ideas / Tour Operators

‘Parrots in the Snow: the rise and fall of Bladon Lines’ – article in ‘Ski+Board’ magazine

by iain on Mar 8, 2023 • 3 Comments

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 / Resorts

Ski Touring in Morocco: A Photo Essay

by iain on Feb 8, 2019 • No Comments

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...

Resorts / Tour Operators

‘I’m a modern-day Batman’ says anti-ESF campaigner

by iain on Nov 2, 2014 • No Comments

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...

Tour Operators

Why do chalet girls bake a cake every day?

by iain on Aug 13, 2011 • 2 Comments

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,...

Latest entries

Marketing

The .ski (dot ski) domain arrives

by iain on Jul 2, 2013 • No Comments

Just over a year ago, we reported that the new .ski (dot ski) domain would be coming soon to the Internet. This project has been developed by StartingDot – a startup which raised €1.5 million to create new Top-Level Domains. .ski will be the first ski specific domain name extension. Potential 110m registrants...

Resorts

40 Ski Resort Website Designs…in 2 minutes

by iain on Jul 2, 2013 • No Comments

We thought it would be interested to put together a short comparison between the home pages of forty of Europe’s leading websites, inspired by Slopefillers recent example from the US. How do they compare in terms of their look and feel? Maybe you are looking for inspiration yourself for a new design. Either way,...

Marketing / Social Media

Red Bull leverage Instagram with ‘Inspiration’ campaign

by iain on Jun 28, 2013 • No Comments

We all know how good Red Bull are at content marketing (remember Felix Baumgartner, anyone?). But not all of their marketing revolves around action sports. Their recent ‘RedSilverBlue’ campaign invited Instagrammers to use the hashtags #rededitionplease #blueeditionplease and #silvereditionplease to tag their ‘inspirational’ photos. The best images were included on colour-graded billboards in several cities...

Marketing / Skipedia / Social Media

Irn-Bru Fanny demonstrates the power of Twitter

by iain on Jun 27, 2013 • No Comments

This initial campaign ran around a year ago, but it’s worth looking at again as a great use of Twitter to generate positive brand coverage. A new series of three TV commercials for Irn-Bru were successively launched, with a fourth internet-only ad ready to complete the campaign, hosted solely on YouTube. Launched from a single...

Ideas

Les Sports de Neige

by iain on Jun 9, 2013 • No Comments

Not anything to do with marketing, but love these illustrations about ‘Les Sports de Neige’. Click on the image to see the large size version. By Iain Martin

Marketing / Tour Operators

Five Ski Tour Operator Home Pages Expressed as Word Clouds

by iain on Jun 6, 2013 • No Comments

The sun is out, the sky is blue, summer is here. So in the absence of much ski marketing activity, I thought it would be fun to compare the home pages of five of the UK’s leading ski tour operators – as word clouds. See if you can guess who is who…? ...

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