Skiing, skating, and shredding

American Demographics, Feb, 1996 by Shannon Dortch

February is the month of frigid outdoor temperatures, arid indoor air, and blue feet. Yet millions of Americans look forward to it. They are gleefully heading outdoors to slide around in the snow. More than 10 million Americans aged 7 and older went downhill skiing in 1994, making it the nation's most popular winter sport. Almost 8 million went ice skating, according to the National Sporting Goods Association's (NSGA) annual sports participation survey.

The last six years have not been good for the ski industry, however. Both the number of skiers and the percent who ski at least once a year declined between 1988 and 1994. About 5 percent of people aged 7 and older skied at least once in 1994, or 10.6 million. This is a decline from 12.4 million in 1988. The ski slide has been blamed on everything from the 1990-92 recession to poor snow conditions. But the broadest and most troubling reason is demographic change. As the baby-boom generation grows older, fewer customers will come to the slopes.

As their core customer group shrinks, ski areas look for new ways to attract business. Snow-making technology has helped some ski areas minimize their vulnerability to the weather, for example. Not long ago, it was not unusual for the huge Killington Resort in Vermont to see its number of ski business days fluctuate as much as 30 percent a year, says John Clifford, vice president of marketing for S.K.I. Ltd., which operates the Killington and Mount Snow ski areas. In the 1990s, Killington's snowmakers have reduced weather-related ups and downs to about 15 percent a year.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the declining number of skiers is the increasing number of snowboard riders. Snowboarding uses a single, wide board rather than a pair of long skis to slide down the slopes. Like many new sports, snowboarding has grown rapidly since 1988, when the NSGA first included it in its annual survey. About 2.1 million Americans aged 7 and older participated in snowboarding in 1994, compared with 1.3 million in 1988.

Most of the erosion in skiing is due to former alpine skiers who defect to snowboarding, says Pam Murphy, director of marketing for Mammoth Mountain ski area in Mammoth Lakes, California. "At Mammoth, we've done surveys that show 70 percent of snowboarders were previously skiers. That's higher than the national average, which is probably about 50 percent."

SKIERS VS. SNOWBOARDERS

Snowboarding is strongly favored by boys aged 12 to 17 and men. In 1994, 1.5 percent of males aged 7 and older participated in snowboarding, compared with 0.3 percent of females. And 12-to-17-year-olds of both sexes have a much higher-than average participation rate, at 4 percent.

These young mavericks who like to "shred" down the slopes may be causing a small additional decline in the number of alpine skiers. Some skiers aged 55 and older are not comfortable sharing the slopes with snowboarders, so they quit skiing completely, Murphy says. Yet snowboarders may not be the menace they are perceived to be. A snowboarder is no more likely to collide with an alpine skier than is another alpine skier, she says. "The problem with snowboarding is one of perception. Acceptance jumps dramatically when people ski with snowboarders for a couple of years."

Both skiing and snowboarding are relatively expensive sports. They require lift tickets and lots of equipment, and many enthusiasts must travel long distances to get to a ski area. Yet almost 5 percent of Americans hit the slopes at least once in 1994. While snowboarding's most avid participants are children aged 12 to 17, the biggest skiing fans are young adults aged 18 to 24. They are twice as likely as average to ski, at 10 percent.

Unfortunately, the ski industry cannot look to young adults for increased participation in the next century: there aren't enough of them to reverse the overall declines in the number of alpine skiers. Ski areas must continue to depend on the huge baby-boom generation, now aged 32 to 50. Although they are less likely than younger people to ski, boomers are a large enough group to precipitate modest growth in ski participation into the next century. This should happen even if the boomerst rates of skiing continue to decline slightly to 2000.

If the skiing habits of different age groups don't change, however, the number of skiers will grow about 2 percent between 1996 and 2000. This will occur partly because of a growing number of skiers aged 45 to 54. The number of skiers in this group may increase 15 percent, to over 1.1 million in 2000. Skiers aged 55 and older should also grow more rapidly than average between 1996 and 2000, at 6 percent. But even with that high growth rate, their numbers should be few, at 290,000.

How will this affect downhill ski areas and related businesses? As skiers age, their participation rates decline. So you would expect the share of all skiers who are middle-aged to decline also. Yet the baby boomers are so large in number that they will cancel out this effect. The share of skiers aged 35 and older should hold steady at about 27 percent to 2010. Baby boomers are the same people many ski areas previously courted with post-ski festivities such as live rock music in the 1970s and 1980s. In the next decade, aching boomers in their 40s and 50s will seek comfort after a jarring day of alpine skiing. Keeping them in the lodge may mean providing plenty of cushy seating, ample heat, and low-volume music.