It's back to the rat race. The dust of the holidays has finally settled. All the presents are unwrapped (my favorite this year was the Nike + ipod to go with my ipod Nano), all the food has been eaten (did I really eat all that?), all the relatives have returned safely to their own homes (thank god), all the champagne that helped ring in the new year has been drunk (is that what my headache is from?), and hopefully by now all the "I can't believe he/she/they did that at the office holiday party" gossip has been forgotten. But this year's holiday festivities and escapades passed with something blatantly missing... cold weather and snow! Not that I'm sappy and wished for a white Christmas, but I at least hoped there would be remnants of a previous snow fall on the ground outside my Connecticut home (in case you missed my first post, that's where I live). Or at the very least, I wished it was cold enough to feel like Christmas in New England. Instead, the weather report you see in the title is what is was like from my perch here in the northwest corner of CT on New Year's day.

Needless to say, the New England weather we've been experiencing has certainly had an effect in Killington, and that is something that is definitely not news to most. The Skyeship Gondola which allows our trailside homes to be "trailside" is not open yet- a first in my 7 winters with Wise. But I am not going to harp on the bad news, or complain about the weather challenges that we're up against. Rather, I will lay out for you the good news, the positive steps and the marketing agenda I have in place.

Some stats:
- Since October 1st, we've received 3716 phone calls to our 800 numbers (which does not count customers that call our "802" number directly) totaling 17,370 minutes (and counting).
- Since October 1st, we've received 199 emails and 81 phone calls from our listings on triphomes.com.
- Since October 1st, we've received 621 emails and from our listings on The Homeaway Network which includes cyberrentals.com, a1vacations.com, greatrentals.com, and homeaway.com, and usatoday.com
- Since October 1st, our website, wisevacations.com has received a monthly average of 7212 visits per month viewing an average of 15.8 pages per visit.
- Since November 1st, our listings on rentjillshouse.com have been viewed 4397 times and we've received 65 emails.

Above is simply a mere sampling of the many websites and portal sites on which Wise Vacations has its properties listed or on which we have established links back to our site. Others include (but not limited to): vermontproperty.com, vermont.com, vtliving.com, killington.com, killingtonvillage.com, killingtonlinks.com, and many more. Needless to say we've received countless more email inquires from these sites as well as directly from our own.

A recent stat I heard was that 73% of online travel bookings start with a search engine query. So it shouldn't surprise you that Wise heavily markets all of its websites for search engines (see list of links at right). We have fast become a "google it" society, and Wise's marketing efforts reflect that fact. In addition, we also run an extensive "Pay-per-click" campaign on both Google and Yahoo. This is, in essence, what its name implies. We bid on keywords and phrases and when a potential customer types in such keywords and phrases, our listing and website address appear in the "sponsored links" section (what you see at the top (Yahoo) and side (Google) of the search results page). I could go on much further, but I won't bore those who are not technology geeks. However, if you do fall under the aforementioned category, email me, and I would be happy to explain it further.

In addition to all that has been laid out above, we continue to advertise packages, promotions, and discounts (yes, discounts) on our website and these are also part of our overall marketing strategy in an effort to maximize occupancy and revenue.

So in a nutshell, I can't do anything about the weather, but I am doing everything else! (I also have a call in to Denver to see if they can ship some of the snow our way... I'll keep you posted on the outcome of that one).