Bring Your Pricing Strategy to Life with Aspenware Commerce
Our customers often choose Aspenware because of the flexibility it provides for implementing any pricing strategy. As the ski industry has experimented heavily with different strategies over the past decade or so, Aspenware has come along for the ride developing features and functions to help you implement the most successful pricing strategy for your resort. So, whether your pricing strategy is intended to drive revenues, increase visits at off-peak times, or incentivize online sales, Aspenware has a solution.
Dynamic Pricing
It’s no secret that dynamic pricing is a proven strategy to maximize revenue. It offers the ability for resorts to nimbly respond to market trends, customer demand and behavior, and even the weather! It enables resorts to increase yield and capitalize on revenue opportunities. Research shows that while offering a single price point leads to lost revenue, offering multiple price points increases yield and, therefore, revenue is not left on the table.
Aspenware’s robust Dynamic Pricing module enables resorts to dynamically price for various scenarios including:
- Weekend and weekday rates
- Peak and off-peak prices
- Early or late season rates
- Favorable/unfavorable weather predictions
Encourage Pre-commitment
Encouraging resort guests to commit early has numerous obvious benefits from higher yield to capacity planning and weatherproofing your business. Aspenware provides several options for leveraging this strategy and encouraging guests to book their ski trips earlier.
One feature in Aspenware’s Dynamic Pricing module that enables precommitment is to vary pricing by how many days in advance the lift ticket is purchased. Many resorts offer the steepest discount 7 days out and then less of a discount 1-6 days in advance, then window ticket prices the day of arrival. The flexibility is there, however, to add additional levels of advanced purchasing discount rates. Perhaps you have varying discounts at the 24-hour, 7-day, 30-day, and 60-day marks. Aspenware can accommodate any advanced pricing window that you’d like to set and also allows the ability to maintain a linear relationship between adults and child/teen/senior ticket prices meaning guests will get the same discount from the adult rate no matter when they buy.
Communicate Scarcity
No one like to miss out and FOMO can be a big motivator for resort visitors to commit early. With many resorts considering limiting capacity, the ability to grab a lift ticket can be challenging, especially on a higher-demand day. With Aspenware’s pricing module, inventory banners can be placed on the calendar to let guests know how many tickets are left for a particular day, or, with our enhanced pricing calendar, it can be configured to show more general levels of availability such as “Sold Out”, “Low” or “Plenty.” The colors and text can, of course, be customized. This threshold level is tied to inventory in the point-of-sale system; Inventory Pools in RTP|One and other POS systems so resorts manage their ticket inventory in one place. Ensuring careful customer communication around scarcity helps avoid visitor disappointment or bad press.
Tiered Pricing
Speaking of scarcity, Aspenware also offers the ability to leverage demand-driven pricing with our pricing tiers feature. As tickets sell through, the price automatically rises when rolling to a new, high-priced tier. An optional banner across the date on the calendar indicates how many tickets are left in that pricing tier to encourage guests to “Buy Now!” Visitors will not want to miss out on the best deal and commit early to secure the price.
Good-Better-Best
A recent Harvard Business Review article touted the merits of Good-Better-Best pricing for increasing overall yield across industries stating that “Every company already offers the equivalent of a Better offering, and even if some firms can’t implement both Good and Best, many could gain new customers, additional revenue, or both by adding either a Good or a Best to their lineup.” The mountain resort industry is no exception. This spin on tiered pricing offers variably priced bundles of products targeted to customers of varying economic means or those who value features differently. This strategy fits well with ski, an industry that caters to both the budget-conscious, local family ski outing and the VIP luxury destination vacation.
Aspenware offers features such as our cascading product attributes and add-ons that enable guests to customize the exact package they desire. Bundle them upfront during the lift ticket purchase to lock in the best rates for all of the “extras.” Want to upgrade to the latest performance skis and include tickets to a VIP experience event? No problem. Need to watch the budget while getting the entire family on the mountain this season and include “Kids Ski Free” tickets? We can do that. Regardless of the creative package you wish to offer your guests, Aspenware has the flexibility to accommodate the targeted offering.
Setting a pricing strategy for your resort is no small task. There are inevitably many factors and market variances to consider. Deciding how best to maximize your resort’s revenue through a solid pricing strategy is up to you. Making it come to life in your ecommerce store is on us.
Book an Aspenware demo today to see how we can help you put your pricing strategy into play.