The impact of the Covid-19 virus was devastating and tragic to Americans and the entire world. By no means do we mean to discount it's effects, but we do feel letting our ski club friends know what we're seeing may prove helpful to their planning.
Flashback to April, 2020 - what are we headed for?
To say we here at Sports America weren't quite sure what the next season would look like for ski clubs would be an understatement. We're confident no one had an idea what the tourism landscape would look like 9 months into the future, much less a specific niche like ski club travel. While we weren't in panic mode, we definitely changed our normal operations based on the unknown. For example we had an account manager resign in mid February and, in a typical off season, we'd have hired a replacement by now. This April/May we admittdly weren't so much in the market for new hires.
Approaching July, 2020 - what does it look like now?
It's now several months later and, while we're not so naive as to believe we know exactly what to anticipate this season, we have started collecting and interpretting enough data to ease some of our concerns.
Total Group Trips:
Industry-wide, we anticipated roughly a 10%-15% drop in overall ski club trips available to pursue. Clubs that typically run one or two trips seemed to be planning the same, however clubs running 5-9 trips looked to be shaving one or two off their slates. In Sports America's case the impact of that drop was a bit less as we primarily work within North America (but that will be changing at a reasonable pace, stay tuned!) and we saw multiple clubs drop their annual European trips in favor another domestic option.
Specific to Sports America, we initially anticipated around a 12-20% drop in total trips due to multiple factors:
The "bidding season" isn't quite over but far enough along to get a strong indication. There's some debate/bets as to where it ends up with some of the ever-optimists anticipating right about the same number of trips year-over-year, while your author is anticipating a 4-6% drop in total trips - a respectable number given the headwinds listed above, on top of Covid concerns.
Guests per trip:
The other half of the equation. A small decline in overall trips eases concerns, but if we saw a 25% drop in attendees per trip, that would represent a significant impact not just on us, but on our club clients who may have overcommitteed. So what have we seen so far....?
Obviously we won't the exact answer for another 5-6 months but we are able to use our online registration system and the date of registrations to compare year-over-year (over year, over year) for bookings with longtime clubs that have a consistent track record. It's not an exact science - a trips to Aspen is almost always going to outproduce an equivalent trip to a boutique British Columbia resort another year. That said, I've done the best I can to compare rough apple-to-apple equivalents of recurring club trips to analyze booking patterns. While tour operators aren't really in the business of sharing booking figures with one another, I have no reason to believe our competitors aren't seeing similar trends.
Epic/Ikon Group Sales (ignoring individuals)
One of the more encouraging metrics as these tend to indicate club members who are confident in attending more than one trip this season. Using last season (2019/2020) sales through June 25 as a baseline of 100%, here's the relative percentage of sales through 6/22 of other years.
In our opinion, 91% of last year's sales year-over-year is a very strong figure. Notably because of the conservative calendar for price increases that tends to trigger club member's to finalize that purchase. Ikon passed an increase back on June 17 while Epic/Vail Resorts has yet to do so, which also helps explain why we've sold more than ten times the number of Ikon passes to date relative to Epic. We'd be rather surprised if total pass sales to ski clubs don't considerably exceed last year's by the time early November rolls around.
Council Ski Club Trips
The ski council trips present an interesting look as these tend to be less reliant on ski club meetings, launch parties, etc. as most have dedicated social media staff.
Council Trip #1 - annual recurring early season trip
Perhaps our best year over year comparison, an annual trip to the same destination at much the same pricing. Note that last year happened to sell well above previous years. This trip went on sale two weeks later than typical, so figures shown are based on two weeks of sales rather than a specific date.
More positive signs here, holding at a typical booking pattern even without live club events promoting the package (last season's high figures were a bit of an aberation).
Council Trip #2 - annual ski week to varying destinations
This trip went on sale two weeks later than typical, so figures shown are based on two weeks of sales rather than a specific date. Figures in parantheses represent the total sales through June 25 (2 weeks for this season, 4 weeks for other seasons)
Extremely strong figures here, ones we like to see. Substantially stronger initial bookings than typical. As a footnote, this trip tends to be available well into fall, thus no urgency on the consumer's part to register early. While the percentage differences are dramatic, in terms of the overall final guest count the totals are relatively small.
Council Trip #3 - annual ski week to varying destinations
A tough comparison as this is the first year this group is using our online booking system, so I don't have past day-by-day registration data. Rather this chart shows this year's sales to date relative to the eventual total bookings from previous seasons. Also important to note only 80% of the clubs have put their blocks of for sale this year. While not an apples to apples comparison, this group was included based on their geographic location - one hit particulary hard by the Corona virus in the early days.
Once again, these are extremely strong figures considering it's a comparison of two weeks of sales this year compares to over six months of sales the prior years.
Club Trips
Perhaps the more important figures, how are ski club trips selling? Many clubs rely on meetups and other face-to-face contact to promote these trips, something that hasn't been available in most regions to-date.
Club Trip A - annual ski week to varying destinations
A club in the South that typically brings 60-70 guests on their trip.
Once again, these are extremely strong figures considering it's a comparison of two weeks of sales this year compares to over six months of sales the prior years.
Club Trip B - annual ski week to varying destinations
A club in the Southeast that typically brings 50-66 guests on their trip.
A strong start last season makes this year's start look slightly soft. Perhaps a trend of consumers booking early to secure their spot?
Club Trip C - combined three ski weeks to varying destinations
A club in the Northeast that typically averages 32-36 per trip, based on three trip totals.
A bit misleading at a quick glance. Figures are down substantially from last season, but last season was markedly stronger than their historic averages. Like council trip #2, consumers are aware these trips rarely sell out quickly and, absent a reason to book immediately, we're optimistically anticipating a more traditional steady, consistent pattern from late May through November for this group.
Early conclusions / estimates
It's perhaps a bit premature to list anything states as conclusions. We should have more accurate data come late August or September. However, based on the early picture, at this time we're estimating:
- A rough 10-15% reduction of overall ski club destination trips with a significantly larger reduction of European club trips and lower reduction of North American trips - likely in the 6-8% lower range.
- It appears somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-85% of past guests are registering in typical fashion. Though an admittedly small sample size, the geographic area of the club doesn't appear to impact this figure much.
- Presumably 15-20% of past guests are awaiting more clarity of the state of tourism before making a commitment on these trips.
- We suspect a portion of those 15-20% prospective guests currently in a holding pattern may return to the typical booking pattern when clubs are able to begin their face-to-face marketing once again, meaning perhaps a smaller percentage than 15-20% are holding out due to virus concerns.
We suspect a good portion of the 15-20% club holdouts will return once the country adapts to the impact of the virus, whether that's via new vaccine / treatments (hopefully) or a better and more rigid understanding of how to lower the risk of infection through personal practices, and/or the clubs are better able to promote these trips in person once again or continue adapting to promote their trips remotely in this new environment. The possiblity definitely exists that pent up demand for travel could not only counter the drop we're currently seeing, but push totals beyond their norms. One concern on that front is airline seats as we've alredy seen the airlines more conservative in their allocations, unsure on what restrictions to may be in place to reduce passenger counts they may face (e.g. government suddenly requires middle seats be left empty). A reduced number of available airline seats could drive up prices and reduce club participant demand.
As a company, while we're not expecting a banner year at this time we're also not expecting a truly difficult season. Clearly the situation with the virus can change rapidly but, at current pace, it appears we're looking at a fairly heavy headwind on our operations rather than the potential hurricane we were preparing scenarios to counter back in April.
Thanks for reading and think snow!
Steve Broski / Sara Clemons
Sports America