Ski resorts are supposed to be all about carving fresh powder, après-ski cocktails, and Instagram-worthy mountaintop views. Instead, they’re making headlines for worker strikes, customer frustration, and general discontent. Case in point: the ski patrol strike at Park City Mountain Resort. For weeks, patrollers walked off the job over wages and skyrocketing living costs, effectively shutting down America’s largest ski resort. Their victory was a wake-up call to the industry—but it was also a lesson in the importance of crisis communications and effective insights gathering.
Vail Resorts, Park City’s parent company, has spent decades gobbling up resorts and streamlining operations to boost margins. But here’s the thing: you can’t optimize your way out of a bad reputation. The strike forced Vail to issue a rare concession—offering credits to pass holders who skied through the chaos—but the real problem runs deeper. This isn’t just about wages. It’s about failing to understand the people who make the whole operation work: employees and customers alike—and, arguably, not handling the crisis swiftly nor effectively enough.
A failure to listen—until it’s too late
Ski resorts, like many businesses, have become overly reliant on transactional data. They can track how many lift tickets were sold, what time skiers hit the slopes, and how much they spent on nachos and chili fries. But what they don’t seem to know is what their guests and employees actually think and how this might ripple outward. Relying on purchase behavior alone is like trying to ski blindfolded—it’s reckless, dangerous, and a guaranteed way to crash. And, even when there are insights programs in place, they aren’t gathering feedback in a way that elicits solid, authentic responses. In fact, I receive surveys from Vail myself, but the surveys are unengaging and clunky—and never in-the-moment when I am at or have recently left the resort.
Fortunately, a better model exists. Take Carnival Cruise Lines. Instead of simply crunching numbers, the brand engages in ongoing, direct conversations with its guests and employees. Through its insight community, it can triangulate data from multiple sources—transactional behavior, social feedback, and deep, qualitative insights—to make smarter decisions before problems spiral out of control.
Carnival achieves an 83% response rate for pre- and post-sailing feedback, and within 24 hours, its leadership team has access to high-quality insights. This agility allows it to adapt quickly, helping the organization to meet customer expectations while avoiding costly missteps or PR disasters.
Capture insights to prevent disaster
So how do ski resorts—and companies in general—avoid pitfalls? Carnival provides a great real-world example of going beyond spreadsheets in order to listen. But there are several approaches and solutions that help brands build real-time, meaningful connections with both customers and employees:
- Engage people where they are. Customers and employees are texting—a lot. In fact, more than 163 million texts are sent on a daily basis globally. Reaching audiences via a familiar interface like SMS to conduct conversational surveys feels comfortable and familiar, and is likely to garner authentic responses.
- Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative insights. By integrating video, photo, and text-based responses, companies can capture deeper, more contextual feedback. Video responses alone generate up to 700% more words than traditional open-end questions, offering a richer understanding of customer sentiment, real-time product testing, and authentic in-the-moment reactions.
- Leverage real-time engagement. Traditional research methods often take too long. Agile, in-the-moment insights, however, allow companies to spot trends, correct course, and make better decisions before problems escalate. Engaging travellers, guests, or participants, while they are experiencing a product or service leads to more accurate and actionable insights, helping companies respond to issues in real time rather than after the damage is done.
- Make insights easy to act on. Collecting data is useless if it just sits in a report. Visual storytelling, AI-powered summaries, and digestible dashboards help decision-makers use the insights to drive change. Dashboards that highlight key takeaways and trends at a glance make it easier for teams to take quick action. AI-powered tools can analyze qualitative feedback, distilling rich narratives into strategic insights without the need for manual analysis, allowing businesses to pivot with confidence and speed.
Had Vail Resorts deployed a more comprehensive insights strategy, it might have seen the warning signs before its workforce departed. It could have adjusted wages, improved working conditions, or at the very least, had a plan in place before the situation exploded. Instead, the organization was caught flat-footed, forced into reaction mode, and left issuing apologies and discounts.
Listen now, or pay later
The lesson here is simple: understand your audience before they force you to do so. Whether you’re running a ski resort, a cruise line, or any other customer-facing business, the cost of ignoring insights is steep. Don’t leave guests out in the cold at peak season, and never underestimate the strength of feeling that can be expressed so fast and so effectively via social media channels.
Vail Resorts describes itself as ‘the premier mountain resort company in the world and a leader in luxury’ but queuing for hours during a much needed holiday leaves customers feeling ripped off—and its upcoming earnings call in March will likely highlight the impact. Investing in real-time research, direct engagement and effective crisis communications isn’t just a smart move—it’s necessary. In today’s world, if you’re not listening, you’re setting yourself up for a fall.
