Mammoth Mountain recap with VP Pam Murphy

After the abundant snow season last year,  we decided to catch up with Mammoth Mountain Vice President Pam Murphy to talk about the past season and plans for next season, including retail and travel partnerships.

How did the season go? It seems like it was a huge year. How much snow did you end up getting? What did it all mean for business?

We had a great season. We had a record snowfall year with about 669 inches that gave us a really long season. Our visitation was up slightly from last year, especially with our season pass holders.

The Quiksilver store in Mammoth

More encouraging is that the skiers coming were spending more on discretionary items they had quit buying before.

Retail was up 15% over last year. We saw a great increase from food and beverage, our ski school, and the other parts of our business, but the best is that we saw the strongest increase in business percentage-wise in retail, which was incredibly encouraging.

We closed on July 4th and there was still a lot of snow. We actually had to use snow removal equipment to open up our mountain bike parks this summer.

How did your season pass program do? 

Our MVP program was up a lot and we saw some great visitation increase from it. The MVP club is typically a closed pass program where only existing pass holders can purchase those passes for next season.

The program opens up every few years to new members when attrition brings the total number of pass holders low enough, so we opened it this past year. The MVP pass is our lowest-priced unrestricted season pass. This year we had a lot of pass holders bragging about getting in 160 days or more this year.

See Page 2 for changes coming next season

Any changes for next season? 

The interior of the Quiksilver store

Yes. We are replacing Chair 5 with a high-speed quad. Chair 5 gets people to the second highest peak on the mountain so people are really thrilled about it. This will also allow us to move the top and bottom terminals on that lift slightly to better serve our guests.

Also, we are implementing the largest installation of RFID gates in North America and will have them at all of our entry portals. RFID is a new, hands-free, ticket-scanning program where customers don’t have to dig through their pockets or show a pass. They will just be able to go through a gate rather than wait in long lines.

The pass is a card stock, much like a season pass, and customers will be able to reload them online or by calling 800.MAMMOTH so they won’t have to wait in lines at the ticket window.

For us, it also makes selling packages much easier, and we’ll be offering a lot of online promotions around it.

It might take a while to educate people about it, but they are going to love it. A lot of resorts like Alta and Aspen are already using the technology.

We will also be offering new air service this season. We are working with United Airlines to potentially offer flights out of Orange County and San Diego, as well as increase flights out of San Francisco.

We will also continue to offer great services through our other airline partner, Horizon. The new changes should definitely make it a lot easier to gain access to Mammoth.

Any new stores opening? 

Mammoth Mountain isn’t specifically opening any more new stores.

We will still have the Quiksilver Store, which was great for us, along with retail stores at all of our base lodges and in The Village at Mammoth.

Last year was our first year of operation for the Quiksilver Store, and from last year to this past June, we were up 24%.

Do you have any new big marketing plans?

One of the largest initiatives is our RFID program and new opportunities around that.

We are also really focusing on market to specific segments and tailoring our marketing to guests at certain stages in lives: Families with young kids, families with teens and older kids, grown ups without kids, and of course our youth action core segment that we continue to be strong with.