SKI resurrects its resort rankings

Last year, SKI magazine announced that it was discontinuing its ranking of American ski resorts, but just like a relapsing alcoholic, it decided to reinstate them this year. The result isn’t pretty, at least from my own personal opinion.

While the issue of SKI devoted to the survey doesn’t explain its methodology, I suspect that the magazine polled its readers.

Of course, we don’t know how many folks read SKI these days. The publisher’s advertising rate card claims a circulation of 300,000 copies (which always is a bit exaggerated), of which less than half is paid circulation, which might leave between 100,000 and 125,000 paid copies.

This season, Deer Valley ceased to offer a free SKI subscription with its season passes, which reduced the number of voters and explains in part why the Utah resort moved from its usual top 3 position down to 5.

What’s clear is that one resort offering a free subscription to its pass-holders and aggressively campaigning for them to vote for the place where they ski, may dramatically skew the results, and since we have no idea how many readers did cast their vote, this might explain the rather surprising results.

We all should beware of that kind of ranking “resurrection” as it will invariably spawn its own “zombies”. This said, I strongly feel that this poll should be based on the destination (i.e. Park City for both Deer Valley and Park City Mountain, or the Vail Valley for Vail and Beaver Creek, etc.) and not just the ski hill.

This would be far more indicative of what a mountain destination has to offer, from its skiing to its complete array of amenities and entertainment.

Will someone listen to me out of the white expanse of wilderness? I doubt it seriously!