The NSAA Growth Committee has quietly become one of the most consequential forces in ski industry strategy — and they just leveled up. After hitting their initial target of 60 million annual skier visits, the committee has set a new, more ambitious goal: grow the number of active US skiers and snowboarders from 10.7 million to 13 million. AI is now part of the toolkit. Here’s what this means for you.
Data-driven growth strategy is now standard practice at the national ski industry level — independent resorts need to follow suit.
The Shift from Visits to Participants
This is actually a meaningful strategic evolution. Skier visits measure how often existing skiers show up. Skier participation measures how many humans are part of the sport at all. Chasing visits optimizes for your current base. Chasing participants means growing the pie — bringing in new people who’ve never skied before. That’s harder, more expensive, and more important for the long-term health of every resort.
How AI Is Changing the Growth Strategy
The NSAA’s growth work is now powered by RRC Associates data combined with AI analysis to identify participation barriers by demographic, geography, and income segment. This is no longer gut-feel marketing — it’s behavioral modeling at the population level. The committee can now identify which zip codes have the highest untapped potential, which income brackets face the steepest access barriers, and which marketing messages work by segment. Small and mid-size resorts can tap into these insights through NSAA membership and committee output.
What “Sustainable and Welcoming” Actually Requires
The committee’s new purpose statement explicitly calls out “a sustainable and welcoming future for the sport.” That’s code for two things: climate-adaptive operations and an intentional diversity strategy. Resorts that aren’t already thinking about learn-to-ski programs for underrepresented communities, accessible dynamic pricing for lift tickets tiers, and multilingual staff and marketing are going to find themselves outside the industry’s momentum — and outside the committee’s playbook — within five years.
Your Takeaway: Align With the Macro Strategy
You don’t need to be on the Growth Committee to benefit from its work. The committee publishes best practices through NSAA channels. Start by reviewing your demographic breakdown of new vs. returning guests. Identify where you’re losing first-timers — is it at the lesson experience? Rental process? Price point? The NSAA framework gives you a structured lens to diagnose this. Fix the first-timer funnel and you’re directly contributing to that 13-million goal — while also building your own long-term revenue base.
One Practical Step This Week
If you’re an NSAA member, find out who at your organization is tracking Growth Committee publications and recommendations. If nobody is, assign it. The data and playbooks this group produces are among the most actionable free resources available to US resort operators — and most resorts aren’t using them at all.
