Coors two-for-one lift ticket promotion cancelled early

“I don’t know how much of an incentive it was”
    
If you’re looking for a deal on Crested Butte Mountain Resort lift tickets, you won’t get it by drinking Coors Light anymore. A buy-one-get-one-free coupon promotion tied to the purchase of certain Coors products was discontinued in mid-February, and all the coupons were repealed. Any coupons that were released before the promotion ended will be honored at the resort up until Friday, March 6, when the coupons expire.

Coors Light is the official beer of CBMR, but CBMR chief operating officer Ken Stone says the lift ticket promotion was actually negotiated between the resort and the local Coors distributor, Colorado Beverage. He says both companies were upset over the way the promotion was going lately, and mutually decided to end the promotion early.
“It was a joint decision by both parties. It wasn’t working in the way we had intended,” Stone says.
According to the text on the little red coupons, a free lift ticket could be earned with the purchase of one full-price lift ticket, and one 12-, 18-, or 24-pack of Coors Light or Coors Banquet Beer, bottles or cans. Customers would have to bring the coupons, which were distributed at liquor stores in Gunnison, and the UPC code from the Coors product they purchased in order to redeem the offer at the ticket window.
CBMR skier services manager Alex Brown says, “We saw a lot of scalping going on. And people were taking UPCs from other products and saying they were Coors.”
The promotion was being used twice as much this year, Stone says. “We didn’t give away a lot of the free vouchers in Denver, at Nuggets games or soccer games. That certainly put a lot more focus on what was available out there for a deal,” he says.
Stone says when the resort offers heavy discounts on tickets through special promotions like the Coors deal, it puts more pressure on the resort to raise the regular price of lift tickets in order to cover operating expenses.
Additionally, Stone says, the promotion may not have had much impact on luring visitors to the ski area. He says daily skier visits since the promotion was terminated are actually up. “I don’t know how much of an incentive it was to bring new people here,” he says.
In Gunnison, Wet Grocer owner Dan McKenna says he feels it was a great promotion and he hopes it will return next year. McKenna says people ask about it all the time. “They call every day,” he says.
At High Mountain Liquor in Gunnison, store manger Austin Canney also says people call frequently to see if the deal is available. Four people had been in the store on Monday asking about the promotion.
People are even asking on the web. On Telemark.com there is a forum about CBMR lift tickets. On February 19, a web user posted a question asking where the coupons were being sold, and further posts reveal that the promotion was canceled.
McKenna says he thinks CBMR didn’t know what it had created with the promotion until the damage was done.
The promotion featured “blackout” dates, certain days that the buy-one-get-one-free deal cannot be used, but those have changed over the years.
Canney says last year the promotion was blacked out on President’s Day, and for two weeks during Spring Break, but it continued until the end of the season. This year’s promo included President’s Day weekend, but was scheduled to cut off on March 6.
“They were trying to make it work, but it’s just been a mess,” McKenna says. He thinks the number of coupons used during President’s Day Weekend put the resort over the edge. On the following Tuesday, February 17, McKenna says representatives from Colorado Beverage came to get the rest of the coupons.
“The sad part is, I have people calling from Texas and Chicago, and they’ve been doing it for years. They just found out, but they’ve already bought their plane tickets.” McKenna says.
The promotion is certainly well known. A letter to the editor from Krissy Clary was published in last week’s Crested Butte News, where she encouraged people to use the promotion. Two weeks before that, John Norton also encouraged people to use the Coors deal (rather than stealing) in his Norton’s Notions column.
And people did use it. McKenna says he had trouble keeping up with orders of the Coors products.
At High Country, Canney says, they were going through 300 12-packs of Coors a month.
McKenna says the deal was probably tough on CBMR, but he thinks it was a success at bringing people to the Valley. “I think people would love to see it happen again,” he says.
Stone and Brown weren’t sure if CBMR would consider the promotion again, but Stone points out that there are currently other avenues for lift ticket discounts. CBMR offers discounted lift tickets when purchased online at skicb.com, and there are also wholesale services like Liftopia.com, which offers discounted tickets. Stone says the discounts on Liftopia.com aren’t as strong during regularly busy periods like spring break, but there are still some good deals. On Tuesday, March 3, one could purchase a lift ticket for the coming Saturday on Liftopia.com for $52.