With an eye to financial and environmental concerns, tourism providers are vying with one another to develop inventive products and services to meet an increasingly diverse demand. This article discusses some of the trends and best practices adopted by mountain resorts as they redefine themselves.

A broad range of recreational activities

Summer activities are more and more popular with mountain resort clients. (Please see: La tentation quatre-saisons des stations de ski). One-quarter of the resorts surveyed by SAM reported that summer operations accounted for at least 20% of their annual revenue. Mountain biking is currently the most popular summer attraction on offer (61%) (see: Le vélo de montagne représente-t-il un potentiel touristique sous-exploité?), after business meetings (64%) and weddings (81%).

In the next two years, the resorts surveyed plan to focus more on family-oriented activities rather than traditional activities like tennis and golf (see Figure 1). A little less than half of the destinations surveyed are planning to add ziplines (42%), and nearly one-quarter plan to build alpine coasters (23%) or a ropes course (22%).

Climbing walls and bungee jumping are becoming more popular, as are skate parks, water parks and mini golf. In fact, the Massif du Sud area in the Chaudière-Appalaches region now calls itself a “four-season adventure sports outfitter.”

 New customer segments

Many resorts rent out their facilities for business and festive events. The Banff Centre, located in the heart of Banff National Park, now courts the meetings, incentives, conventions and events (MICE) market. Some resorts, like Crystal Mountain in the northwest United States and Mont Sainte-Anne in Québec, actively target the destination wedding segment during the summer and rent out the facilities located on their summits.

Source: Crystalmountainresort.com

Package deals: An ideal solution

Increasingly, resorts are turning to package deals. Packages help make a destination attractive to new visitors, increase business during the off season and draw regional clientele who are interested in shorter stays. In addition, packages fulfil the varied needs of multi-generational travellers and non-skiers.

Relaxing getaways

Spas have become synonymous with the mountain resort experience. Health and wellness are now part of resort marketing and can even provide the raison d’être for a get-together, such as this year’s Wanderlust yoga festival held at Squaw Valley USA, California.

Source: First Track

Some resorts are improving their culinary offerings, sourcing food from a variety of providers and focussing on regional products. Last winter, the Samoëns ski resort in the French Alps organized its first Winemakers’ Week. Winemakers from various regions in France set up kiosks and presented workshops to introduce tourists to their wines. In Québec, Mont Saint-Sauveur recently began a major renovation of its bar and restaurant to offer patrons a wide variety of healthy foods and ensure that the bistro is the area’s trendiest restaurant.

Online marketing, mobile apps and new technology

Web marketing is now one of the most vital promotional channels available and some resorts are using it to great advantage. Wild Mountain in Minnesota posted a deal on LivingSocial, a group purchasing site, offering a discount package of lift tickets and equipment rental. The goal was to attract a new clientele of novice skiers.

Source: Livingsocial

Snowbird in Utah, one of the first resorts to develop its own app, has implemented a social media strategy by including a community page on its site where visitors can share content.

Source: SnowBird

Brighton Resort in Utah has installed two automatic cameras on one run to photograph skiers and snowboarders, who can then download their performances on the resort’s Facebook page.

Vail Resorts has created EpicMix, an application for either mobile or online use that enables clients of its five ski resorts to share their stats on their social networks. The information provided is extensive and includes rate of descent, skier and snowboarder ranking, weather and real-time location of contacts. Last winter, 100,000 people activated an EpicMix account and 40% downloaded the mobile app.

Source: Epicmix

New technology has also had an enormous impact on resort operations. At the beginning of the 2011-2012 winter season, Mont Saint-Sauveur and Mont Avila will be installing a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system on their lifts to detect skiers’ cards so they don’t have to show them, just like the system already in place at Le Massif in Charlevoix.

A wide variety of lodging options

A great number of privately owned mountain resort rentals are available online. In Québec and British Columbia, such properties represent approximately 60% of the ads listed on HomeAway. These rentals help increase a destination’s potential customer base and many resort managers feel this type of accommodation complements rental condos and hotel rooms.

However, such rentals have not slowed the real estate developments of groups like Intrawest, Boyne Resorts, Aspen Skiing and Vail Resort. Furthermore, many people are buying second homes located at the base of ski mountains. Finally, resorts are also developing new projects. At Le Massif in Charlevoix, the La Ferme hotel complex will open for business in the spring of 2012, and Mont Sainte-Anne is planning to build a new four-season resort in the next few years.

Source: Le Massif de Charlevoix

Sustainable development as a key element of restructuring

The Whistler resort community has developed a long-term plan, entitled Whistler 2020. It defines various priorities and strategies for achieving the sustainable development of the resort and uses indicators to monitor its progress on its Website.

Source: Whistler 2020

The Quebec Golf Course Owners Association (ATGQ) launched a sustainable development initiative this summer with the creation of the ParTROIS program. This measure helps golf clubs take steps towards eco-sustainable certification.

The National Ski Areas Association in the United States recently added a new component to Sustainable Slopes, its environmental charter for ski areas. Called the Climate Challenge, this friendly competition aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With the help of experts, the employees of the eight resorts participating in the voluntary program took action to fight climate change.

Clientele looking for new experiences, threats of global warming, technological advances and the popularity of social media: the industry does not lack for challenges. However, it is these very issues that have led ski resorts to develop innovative ways of maintaining their attractiveness, and the recent projects launched in Québec hold the promise of a bright future for mountain destinations.

Sources:

- Bast, Morgan. “EpicMix gets nearly 100,000 activations in first season”, buzz.snow.com, April 22, 2011.

- Bergeron, Patricia. «Réaménagement à la base de la montagne- Mont Saint Sauveur se peaufine», carnetduski.com, 13 juillet 2011.

- Kahl, Rick. “Condos on the Cheap,” Ski Area Management, Vol. 50, No. 2, March 2011, p. 54.

- Morrison, Alastair M. “International Trends in Mountain Tourism, Marketing and Development,” Belle Tourism Consulting, 2010.

- Rufo, Samantha, Ken Castle, and Katie Bailey. “Best/Worst Marketing 2010-2011,” Ski Area Management, Vol. 50, No. 3, May 2011, p. 41-45.

- Ski Area Management. “Sustainable Slopes Report Highlights Resorts’ Green Efforts” saminfo.com, July 8, 2011.

- Ski Area Management. “Summer in the Mountains,” Vol. 50, No. 3, May 2011, p. 46-47.

- Urban Land Institute. “Ten Resorts Trends”, www.uli.org, consulted July 13, 2011.

- Watson, Tom. “Brighton offers freestylers an ancillary stoke,” National Ski Areas Association, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2011.

- Wine Tourism in France. “L’oenotourisme, nouveau sport d’hiver”, winetourisminfrance.com, December 29, 2010.

- World Tourism Organization. “UNWTO congress to debate the future of snow and mountain tourism” www2.unwto.org, March 31, 2011.

See also:

Les activités hors saison pour les centres de villégiature: tendances et nouveautés

La tentation quatre-saisons des stations de ski

Collaborative Initiatives

To date none of the 21 tourism regions had produced a comprehensive regional scale sustainable development strategy with a clearly articulated vision, set of achievable short and long-term objectives and progress measure indicators. Yet, tourism is an important economic activity in Québec and in 12 regions it directly generates at least 3% of all income (3). Tourism has much more potential to be sustainable, since most regions have rich natural and cultural resource bases and diversified economies. Although natural resource exploitation forms the foundation of many regions across Québec, there is much untapped potential to expand tourism in these areas, thereby achieving greater economic integration. Untapped potentials also remain between biodiversity conservation and tourism development on private and public lands besides the protected area networks managed by the Provicial Parks Authority, la Sépaq and Parks Canada.

In some regions such as the Laurentians, concrete initiatives have been undertaken towards strategically integrating tourism into the regional economy through the Provincial Government’s Accord Program (4). In other regions a shift towards increased collaboration between stakeholders is occurring by the establishment of various cooperatives. Examples include the Lac Saint Pierre Biosphere Reserve (5), l’Échappé Bleue (6), Le Parc Aventures Cap Jaseux (7) and V.E.R.T.E. cooperatives (8). There are probably numerous other locally driven projects, but to nobody has examined their socio-economic value or general importance.

There are also 23 territorial areas across Québec with Local Agenda 21 (LA21) strategies (9) and one of the best examples with a strong tourism orientation includes the municipality of Baie-Saint-Paul. There, an LA21 process and willingness and leadership by certain stakeholders continue to enable greater community interaction as part of the redevelopment planning of Le Massif Resort (10).

Operational Changes to Improve Performance

Some tourism operations have a longer history of functioning according to sustainability ideals such as the Le Baluchon rural resort (11) and the zoos in Granby and Saint-Félicien (12, 13). However, very few businesses have a transparent Corporate Social Responsibility strategies, such as those published by the Granby Zoo(12) and Transat AT (14). Many tourism operations have reduced their energy and water use and waste output via different mechanisms, but their overall impact is not evaluated. Hotels in Québec seem to be making visible progress, especially since the Québec Hotel Association has its own Reser-Vert certification program (15), and the CITQ also recently modified its rating system to include environmental considerations and carries out checks on behalf of the Canadian Hotels Associations of Green Key rated establishments (16). Since recent years, numerous events including conferences and festivals are increasingly organized as ecologically and socially responsible, such as Montreal’s International Jazz Festival (17). Many other tourism operations also have supply chain management policies and source various products locally and or produced responsibly. Abitibi-Témiscamingue is the first ‘green’ Tourism Region awarded by Recyc-Québec for achieving more than 80% waste recuperation for its office operations (18).

Besides environmental efforts, some tourism businesses are also making contributions to improving north-south relations. For example, L’Auberge l’Autre Jardin (19) has been directly providing financial benefits to developing countries via its support of Carrefour Tiers Monde. Similar actions can be observed by Parc Safari that sells fair-trade products from developing nations (20). Sustainability news about small and medium enterprises (SME) in Québec is not well documented, which suggests limited progress. Since SMEs comprise about the majority of the tourism industry (21), it might be worthwhile to examine their progress, and issues so that appropriate tools could help them implement change towards sustainability.

Quebec’s tourism includes a variety of products to help reduce its greenhouse gas emissions such as a vast bike network developed by Vélo-Québec (22), the Bixi bike in Montreal (23) and the bio buses in Old Quebec and Montreal (24). Some businesses and events are also carbon neutral, but their profiles and numbers has not been documented. For example, Karavaniers du monde is the first tour operator in Quebec to include the cost of carbon offsets in its pricing (25). Climate change does not seem to be a preoccupation of the Quebec tourism sector, despite the vulnerability status of some products notably ski, snowmobile and various other outdoor activities (26).

Some sub sectors in Québec have a long history of encouraging businesses and visitors alike to reduce their environmental impact, notably Québec’s Adventure and Ecotourism Association (27). How many visitors to and from Quebec travel environmentally consciously is not known. Undoubtedly Québecois travelers are increasingly ethically minded. Since 88% of tourists in Québec are of domestic origin, consumers locally need more indication about industry’s progress so they can choose responsibly (28).

Where to next?

Various operational changes to improve environmental and social performance of the tourism sector are occurring at all scales, but nobody knows the real progress in the absence of benchmark indicators. Québec is not ahead nor behind other Canadian Provinces but there has not been a national study to compare progress at this scale. Québec’s tourism sector is in the beginning phase of operationalizing sustainable tourism and the above examples highlight the need for a Provincial scale action plan combined with a set of feasible progress indicators.

The support tools and knowledge network to put sustainable tourism principles into action is growing across Québec, and numerous institutions offer special training to improve human resource capacity, in responsible environmental managers that is directly applicable to tourism (29).

There is also a growing amount of effective tools and mechanisms reported from outside Québec to help implement change rapidly and help sustain a viable and responsible industry sector. However, local leadership remains an important key driver to implementing any action plan. There needs to be more leadership from government and industry to move the fragmented sub-sectors forward and to provide a coordinated approach to the entire process in Québec. The tools are wide ranging, and many remain unexplored potentials in Québec, including financial incentives and voluntary measures.

Sources:

1. Ministère du Tourisme du Québec (2005) Towards a Sustainable Tourism. Tourism Policy of Québec. Governemenet du Québec: Québec City. 37 p.

2. La Fédération des clubs de motoneigistes du Québec (2008) Plan d’action quinquennal de la FCMQ pour l’environnement. La Fédération des clubs de motoneigistes du Québec (FCQM): Montreal. 8 p.

3. Sauvé, R. La reconnaissance de l’industrie touristique dans l’économie locale et régionale. Presentation at the International Symposium on the Sustainable Development of Tourism. March 17 to 19, 2009. Québec City, Canada. Available at: http://www.bonjourquebec.com/mto/activites/symposium-developpement-durable/fr/programme-mercredi.html

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13. Zoo Sauvage de Saint-Félicien. Au sujet du CCBB/Zoo Sauvage. Last accessed 14 April, 2009. [http://www.borealie.org/page.php/fr/1/4.htm].

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