Keeping skiers and boarders after their first lesson

The current "retention rate" of first timer skiers and boarders who return currently hovers around 9%. With they buzz about "terrain based instruction" claiming a 17% retention rate, this might be a good time to see if we can come up with better ways to make people "stick". I agree that having fun is a huge part of it. However, instilling the confidence is key.

I do love the "January is Learn to ski month" program, but something bugs me about it.
http://learntoskiandsnowboard.org/c...irst-introduced-you-to-skiing-or-snowboarding

Here's my idea. I was re-reading Ski Magazine last night and realized that there are tons of articles on how to improve, but nothing to provide encouragement to the first-timers. One objection is, "Do I really want to plop down more money on something I'm not good at?" For me, I was really excited about it, and ate up every magazine and book I could find (not many around). I'd suggest that the Learn to Ski and Snowboard program should be extended to include material/videos/discussion boards (there's an idea) to read after your first lesson. Maybe you don't have confidence, maybe you keep falling and you just don't know why. Maybe you're not sure what trails to ski on.
Seems to me that never-evers need some care and feeding to keep them in the sport.

When I read through most of the stuff that's out there, it seems there is a big push on buying the "right" equipment, where to ski and what to wear, but not much for the never-evers after this one-shot program.

How about a web site just devoted to never evers, with helpful articles, Q&A, pointers, fitness on the cheap, links and so on? Hey, you're spending at least 6 days a week NOT skiing or boarding anyways.

Thoughts?

I started skiing in 1968 and Ski and Skiing Magazines gave me a lot of incentive. I remember looking at ads for Stowe and Whiteface and saying "Oooooh!" Nowadays you'd see too much of skiers jumping off cliffs and starting avalanches, and ads for $$$$ stuff, and say "Uh uh".

Skiing is expensive and a huge PITA (long drives for most people, weather-dependent, cumbersome equipment, etc., etc.) and there's nothing that can really change that. However, the process for beginners can be made a lot more pleasant at many areas. The rental process is often awful and the lessons involve a lot of standing around in crowded areas. It seems like the customer focused business practices are at least 50 years behind other industries. Plenty of memories of standing in line with my kids for 30+ minutes waiting to drop them in lessons.

The degree of difficultly in the learning process really isn't that bad compared to other sports. On modern equipment, it's not that hard to rapidly tackle some easier intermediate trails within a few days or sooner. Watch how long it takes some kids to get decent at baseball or basketball. It's just a lot easier to practice the mainstream sports.

Think like a pusher - give it away until they're hooked - then nail 'em.

billski said:

The current "retention rate" of first timer skiers and boarders who return currently hovers around 9%.

Click to expand...

I've never seen this statistic before, though I've often thought about it. It's lower than I thought (I'd have guessed maybe 1/3), but I'd like to see that 9% carved out into, "took a lesson" and "didn't take a lesson", because I strongly suspect that the group in the former will be significantly larger than the group in the latter. Too many first-timers dont take lessons, and this is the kiss of death.

I started young and was hooked right away - w/o lessons.

Nowadays kids tend to be more coddled and many like the cold less than some of us did - many decades ago. Plus many can't pull themselves away from their screens. Maybe a mix of lessons w/a real social network component of some type. Almost pains me to say that...

For older adults, the right instruction program would have to be tailored to taking it slowly (we don't learn as quickly as the youngsters). Know in my volleyball world that it's the case that you can't teach adults like you instruct kids. Maybe award both groups differently? Apres aspect added in could also help.

Part of the problem is that new skiers aren't told that they can become proficient after just a couple/few days out.