An Open Letter to All Heli-Skiers to Contribute!
Welcome to the "Wikipedia" of Heli Skiing!
First and foremost, my team and I have devoted an enormous amount of time and will continue to do so, with the critical intention of being ACCURATE in the presentation of our information throughout the entire site.
Secondly, we need your help! To achieve our goal of being the quintessential, ultimate resource for first-time heli-skiers and veteran heli-skiers alike, we could use more "horse-power!" If you would like to become a contributor, reach out to us here.
What was our goal at the inception of the site?
What Heli Skiing Problem Are We Trying to Solve?
I found that it's not an easy task to get started as a first-time heli-skier. It's a challenge to make your first booking.
Simply considering a booking necessitates these four things, so the friction begins with the obvious, then it gets harder:
- Having adequate (to expert) skiing skills
- Having the financial resources & justifying the expense
- Allocating the necessary travel / holiday / vacation time
- Spousal support of the endeavor (if necessary)
As a first-time heli-skier manages to overcome those hurdles and consider a booking, he or she often solicits friends to join the journey. This attempt typically fails, as the number of friends able to check all for boxes above, quicky shrinks to zero!
He or she realizes they must go it alone…or not go, further enhancing booking friction.
But that’s not the primary problem we’re solving. This is…
Let's assume that the first-time heli-skier has hopped over the first four roadblocks and is motivated enough to go solo...NOW WHAT?
When a skier (who doesn’t know any other heli-skiers) begins their quest to find an operator destination to facilitate their dream trip, they turn to Google. And what typically happens next? The skier browses the internet in a completely random, haphazard “stumble,” discovering images of wine glasses and helicopters!
This process is why many heli-skiers stick with the operator they discover on their first trip. The friction to further exploration...and the risk of the unknown and some sort of possible failure is perceived as large!
This accidental discovery of operators and somewhat arbitrary approach to a skier’s first booking certainly may discourage some skiers from entering the "booking funnel." Essentially, this may represent lost opportunities of new potential clients for operators.
How does one decide which operator to pursue? And thanks to latent increased travel demand caused by Covid, some operator locations are booked 18 months in advance...yet other operators are advertising for bookings. Does that mean the advertisers provide a less desirable product? From personal experience, I CAN ATTEST to the answer - NO!
So many questions arise in that skier’s mind without ANY good answers!
YEARS AGO, this whole scenario played out exactly this way for me...
And when I convinced my older, well-traveled bother to go the next year, he was notably impressed with the all of the logistics that I had to successfully navigate to execute my first heli skiing trip. The catalyst for me was a lucky introduction to…and conversation with Dirk deBie. Thanks Dirk! Again I appreciated your time.
Our main goal is to make information about heli skiing operators more visible and more robust!
Heli-Skier intends to be...
The Universal Third Party Heli Skiing Resource
With Community Engagement
This is how we solve the problem. This is how create a resource to assist in ultimately making faster, more informed, more comfortable booking decisions.
We’re a third party site, not currently considering any booking agency work. We’re creating a community resource to solicit comments and reviews on all heli skiing operators throughout the globe. We encourage operators to comment as well.
We vehemently intend to universally increase the amount of quality information available for heli-skiers. And by consolidating all of that information about every available operator in the global industry onto one site, exclusively devoted to heli skiing, we firmly believe that this will lubricate the ability of first-time bookings (and veteran Heli-skiers alike) to make more comfortable booking decisions. (And perhaps in the process, we encourage some heli-skiers to break out of their comfort zone and try somewhere new!)
Trip Advisor, Yelp, Google Reviews, etc. and a large assortment of travel bloggers have successfully provided added value to consumers in similar ways.
WHAT MOTIVATED US to do this?
When I began my search for my first booking, I was actually surprised that such a resource didn’t exist, so I set out to change that and build one! Now that my team and I have invested three years and considerable resources to build this site, it is pretty obvious why an industry specific, universal and global resource did not currently exist, until now.
At first, building the site was a passion hobby. Then as the immense amount of time and resources (money) were invested to do it right, the objective was clear…we had TO DO IT RIGHT!
On brand with that theme, you can see we’ve documented every heli skiing Region-Location AND every Heli Skiing Operator’s unique destination(s) throughout the globe.
From our web pages which correspond to their destinations, each operator has been provided a direct link to their individual, respective destinations on their website.
Many operators have multiple destinations, and each destination deserves its own narrative and direct, external link. Some operators with large industry footprints and lots to talk about (such as CMH), have an overview page as well.
If this resource was available when I was considering my first heliski trip decades ago, I probably would have logged hundreds of days in a heli it this point instead of just dozens! Dang!
We have accomplished stage 1 of putting forth what we believe is a one-of-a-kind, industry focused, universal resource created by heli-skiers for heli-skiers. As you can see, it is of course intended to introduce the community to lesser-known operators. I guarantee you’ll find one in a secluded corner of the globe that you didn’t know about!
Later stages of development include the plan to help build personal relationships among heli-skiers, so we can find more like-minded skiing friends to go skiing with.
We believe the idea has tons of potential, and we’ve just begun! It certainly wasn’t created with financial gain as a primary objective…and THAT…is why such a site does not already exist!
Kinda like Mark Zuckerberg…he originally created “The Facebook” because he thought the concept was fun, and it was a cool experiment!
We sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read this. And we appreciate any (non-financial) support that you may extend through comments and outreach.
We look forward to your comments and suggestions.
Respectfully,
and the the rest of the Heli-Skier Team including: Jeff, Michael, Mia, Debbie & Nancy
