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LiftopiaFounded by two avid skiers, Evan Reece and Ron Schneidermann, Liftopia.com went live in October of 2006 with the slogan “Ski More, Pay Less.” Liftopia.com is a destination website that provides discount lift tickets for skiing and snowboarding at some of the most popular resorts in North America, including Killington, Stowe, Park City, The Canyons, Keystone, Winter Park, Sun Valley, and over 100 more.
Once employed by Hotwire.com, both Ron and Evan balanced the risk with careful budgeting, smart investment of time and resources, and unshakable faith. According to Evan, “We were in a position to take a risk. Neither of us had true dependents, and both of us were willing to forego a ‘real’ salary in order to broaden our knowledge by working this whole thing out. There are tradeoffs involved (do I start a business or do I go to business school?), and I think we simply set our own internal expectations at a level that was appropriate to the likely path ahead (read: many peanut butter sandwiches). We knew we were somewhat different, in that we were truly bootstrapping (not ‘bootstrapping’ off of $1M that we made off of a previous endeavor).”
Following the proven business model of Hotwire.com and other online travel sites, Liftopia.com helps alpine resorts utilize yield management and distribution strategies from the travel industry to generate incremental revenue. Since its initial launch, Liftopia.com has expanded its offering to include lessons, rentals, real-time resort conditions, and travel tips to help people once they’re on their way. Business ChallengeLiftopia.com came to Schwartz in 2008 and again in 2009 with a single objective: drive website traffic, accelerate consumer adoption and boost sales. Similar to a lot of Schwartz clients when they first engage with us, Liftopia.com had very few resources. Schwartz PR StrategySchwartz employed a two-phase, project-based PR program for both 2008 and 2009. The first was intended to secure placements in “long lead” publications and the second was designed to target daily newspapers, broadcast outlets and online media such as blogs. Phase one lasted six weeks, during the summer months, and focused on “long lead” publications—such as women’s magazines, and ski and travel publications, which often write their stories months in advance. As with many consumer monthly print publications, stories appearing in November and December issues must be pitched and secured anywhere from three to six months in advance. Phase two started in in the fall (October 2008 and November 2009 respectively) and lasted eight weeks (through January 1, 2009, and February 1, 2010). This phase focused on short-lead targets such as daily newspapers, broadcast outlets and bloggers. Overall, the strategy was straightforward: get as many stories as possible on the regional and national level, across multiple media outlets, and to educate people on the Liftopia concept. Working with Liftopia.com, Schwartz identified cities and media markets that fed into given ski markets, then developed localized press releases for “feeder” cities such as Dallas, Phoenix, Miami and Boston in order to achieve awareness with consumers planning snowy vacations and to drive online discount lift ticket sales. To encourage Liftopia.com inclusion in less-resort specific, broader travel articles being penned by travel beat reporters at influential dailies and wires such as The New York Times and the Associated Press, Schwartz also developed broader pitch ideas surrounding tip sheets on “ways to save money on snowy vacations” that received broad pickup.
Results- Over the course of these two, short term projects (approximately 6 months of total pitching time spread out over 2 years), Schwartz secured media coverage that resulted in Liftopia.com appearing to a national audience estimated at around 305,844,536
- The Schwartz team secured nearly 60 unique articles, including the Associated Press, USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, FOX News, MSNBC.com, CNN.com, AOL, Real Simple Magazine, Fitness Magazine, the CBS Early Show
- Online, Chicago Tribune. Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle and a nationally syndicated article and podcast by budget travel guru Arthur Frommer.
- This coverage includes broadcast placements on KRON 4 in San Francisco that ran three times on Thanksgiving and pieces on ABC 15 in Phoenix and the CBS affiliate in Tulsa, two top referring markets for the site.
- In just the first month of the PR engagement in 2008, the site saw a quadrupling of its traffic, far exceeding the goal set by the client. One story in The New York Times referred 1,800 unique visitors in the first hour of the day. Also, Liftopia.com reported that during sales for January 2009 beat its entire 2007-2008 selling season, coinciding with the Schwartz engagement.
- By the end of the project with Liftopia.com in January 2010, the site’s traffic had jumped to more than 100,000 unique visitors a day, an increase of 600 percent from where Liftopia.com started in July 2008.
- Today, Liftopia.com boasts tickets to more than 120 resorts and raised a Series B round of funding in 2009 from Amicus Capital, along with Erik Blachford, former CEO of Expedia and Sand Hill Angels. More importantly, the business is growing rapidly and gaining more loyal customers every day. Liftopia.com is poised to take the ski-industry by (snow)storm.
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