Learn To Ski And Snowboard Month Surpasses One Million Lessons

The organizers of Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month (LSSM) have announced that resort partners provided more than 150,000 beginner lessons during January 2019. This is the second highest total since several state and regional resort associations started the initiative in 2009. The results were gleaned from surveys distributed to resorts and resort associations nationwide. 

Two previously announced records were set this year. Industry partners surpassed a goal of providing One Million lessons via LSSM. They needed 42,750 in January 2019 and the estimated total is 150,244. The overall total now stands at 1,107,494.

In addition, participating resorts provided approximately 6,200 lessons on Friday, January 11, 2019 during the first industry-planned “Learn to Ski or Snowboard Day Celebration”. This new concept replaced the attempt in 2016 to set a Guinness record for the World’s Largest Ski/Snowboard Lesson. Strict Guinness rules and regulations prevented the industry from achieving the “official record” even though participating resorts provided more than 6,000 lessons on January 8, 2016. That year, resort partners provided a total of just over 164,000 lessons during January 2016. 

Historically, there has been a bump in LSSM participation following an Olympics year and 2019 was no exception. Last year, LSSM programs attracted about 90,000 participants compared to 150,000+ this year. In 2011, there were 75,000 participants compared to 30,000 during the 2010 Olympics year and in 2015 there were 133,750+ participants compared to 74,900 in 2014. 

“This was a great year for LSSM”, said Raelene Davis, VP of Marketing for Ski Utah and chair of the initiative. Ski Utah was one of the original-founding members of the initiative along with several others that support the initiative to this day (the list is posted on the learntoskiandsnowboard.org web site). So may organizations, associations and businesses from all aspects of the industry support this initiative and that is why it has been successful”. 

“Early snow certainly helped get newcomers in the mood to learn this year”, she added, “but the established branding of the initiative paid off in spades within the industry and also among consumers. People know that January IS Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month.”