Winter Park Resort web success story

Leading ski area drives significant business through its web site.

When Winter Park, Colorado’s favorite ski resort, first considered placing their business online, they didn’t know what to expect. A ski resort product is very tangible and the Internet is not. The advantage of the Internet, however, is its impact at reaching increasingly diverse audiences.

So, in 1996, Winter Park Ski Resort chose to work with Stowe, Vermont-based Digital Frontier. Their interest? Put their brochure online.

But the Internet is a powerful communications tool, and in working with Digital Frontier, they soon found out that they could do much more online. The interactivity of the web allowed them to reach different audiences in different ways. In no time, their web site, www.skiwinterpark.com, had become a key part of their marketing efforts.

"Our web site is now a leading part of our marketing mix," notes internet marketing manager, Shaun Johnson. "Over half of our season pass sales come via our site. We went from a brochure-ware web site to an e-commerce site that generates over $4 million a year in sales, and it just keeps going up from there."

Digital Frontier helped orchestrate the type of site that Winter Park needed in order to complement its business goals. Selling season passes, lift tickets and other products online is just a natural extension to their business, and Digital Frontier made that a key part of their web site.

Critical to Winter Park’s web success has not only been their e-commerce capabilities, but also Digital Frontier’s unique web site architecture, providing them with complete control of the overall content of their site, at all times. Keeping information fresh and accurate and promotions current are important when selling an ever-changing product such as skiing. With the Digital Frontier architecture, Winter Park maintains control of its ever-changing content on a regular basis, without needing to become skilled web masters in the process.

"Using Digital Frontier allowed each of us to do what we do best," continues Johnson. "Winter Park Resort is in the ski vacation business and not the web development business. The sites that they create are flexible, making changes easy to do and at little to no cost to us."

And, Winter Park sticks with Digital Frontier due to the value and quality of the product they continue to receive. They get an important business and communications tool, one that grows and changes with them as quickly and easily as the seasons change. "To say that Digital Frontier has met our changing needs over time would be an understatement," adds Johnson. "Consistent performance over time is Digital Frontier’s most significant attribute. Far too often web companies promise a delivery date, but get lost along the way. They continue to deliver new marketing, content and e-commerce solutions, time after time, and on budget."

Want us to create your success story?

You too can benefit from a Digital Frontier-designed web site. For an in-person demo, call us today at (802) 253-8612 or email us at info@digitalfrontier.com, or click here to request more information.