PSIA-AASI

Josh –

You make some great points in your post. I am not sure how you determine European skiers are better skiers however; you knew that was coming I am sure. I have skied many European areas and found the vast majority of European avoids bumps and powder but that is just my experience. I can remember being shocked when we received a dump at the beginning of skiing in Switzerland and finding the same untracked all week. In the US it would have been gone in a few hours, larger skiing area or not!

Teaching “correct” movements or techniques is kind of up for grabs. I find our instructors in the US teach from a more positive how the guest can succeed and have fun approach where European instructors are more authoritarian in there approach. Personally I prefer the “guest experience” myself but I have had European guests tell me point blank they prefer the more authoritarian approach and request I tell them errors and corrections.

NSAA keeps saying areas want and need their “best” instructors teaching the new to lower level skiers if the industry wants a higher guest return rate or a larger influx of new guests; if we want to survive actually. The problem is, not sure how Europe solves this, the pay rate drops drastically for the instructor at those levels, particularly in a group lesson. You want me to cut my income so we can make those advances? Same financial cuts in the kids programs too! Well, my income is low enough as a pro so I prefer the upper level classes where I get good tips thank you even though my pay is the same. Maybe Europeans tip at all levels of classes but Americans do not unfortunately. However, I never turn down a beginner to lower level group either!

John

John,

You raise a great point about the pay.  I never understood why when my mountian was making $35 a head on group lessons and placing 8-10 in a group with me why I was getting paid $8.35 and when they got $55 for an hour private lesson that I got $27.50.  You would think that it would be the other way around.  If beginner group lessons, or beginner kids lessons paid the best and the best instructors were given those lessons first, we would have better skiers, more skiers coming back for lessons, more people staying in the sport and everyone would make more money.  It blows my mind that with all of the information floating around about how important the first, second and third visits are to getting people in to our sport that mountians do not pair their best employees with the newest guests.

As to your experience in Europe where you kept finding untracked snow… where did you say that was again!  My experience has been that Europeans have a much diffrent view of sking.  We Americans want to get the most vertical and the most runs in between the first lift and when Ski Patrol escorts us off the mountian.  For them it is much more social and more about enjoying the people you are with and your surroundings.  Even with lessons, often the instructor will spend the whole day with their students, eating meals and apres ski with them.  We (at least at my mountian) tend to only wait long enough for a tip before we hike back up to lineup to get another class/student.  And as far as I am aware, most Europeans do not tip at all… which explains why bartenders appear to be much less attentive then their American counterparts.

Anyways, maybe what Tanja needs to do is go to her ski school director and ask to increase pay for beginner lessons!

Josh –

My mountain, we will say charged, $80/person for a three hour newbie lesson, five guests per lesson, and paid the instructor lets say $18/hour ($54) for the instructor against $400 (all $ close). If you had a guest holding up the rest of group, usually out of fear, the supervisor would not give the guest a one hour private lesson (cost to the area $18), to keep them from holding up the other four, simply telling the guest something like “you are having some problems let us give you a private for an hour at no added cost”. Quite a value to the guest I assure you! So who wins here while one gets dragged and four wait during the three hours, absolutely no one? On top of this now five people talk to how many more potential guests? And if the guest(s) goes to the office and wants there money back, chances are good the instructor probably gets called on the carpet, at least if it is more than once! Again, who wins? Nobody including the now disillusioned instructor! Did the guest(s) go away happy? No! Why was it approached this way? “They should know this can happen in a group lesson, your job, make it work”. Sure, newbie’s understand what a group lesson is!

If destination areas where instructors are trying to make a living really believe newbie’s are our life blood, I suggest we groom dedicated instructors for adult and child newbie classes. Pay the instructor to attend off and on snow classes dedicated strictly on how to teach newbie’s. The off snow lessons might include, all taught by a local college, how to handle the psyche of new skiers fears, how to prepare and teach lessons, and learning styles (see, do etc.), and how to promote and market the sport/area; of course on snow needs to encompass varied experienced approaches/tricks to learning how to ski i.e. look to turn, etc. As far as pay, either a salary per week, lessons or not, or a higher pay rate per hour with increases each season for say three season starting at $20 per hour or maybe $300/week.

A guest driven organization shows.  Areas, put your dollars up and “walk-the–talk”; really become guest driven otherwise experienced instructors need to work upper level lessons to make a living and over time your bottom line shrinks. You can not keep raising prices; it is predictable diminishing returns when a family of four can take a cruise for 50% less than a week of skiing and pack lite with less hazzle.

Josh - 24 August 2009 11:46 AM

When it comes down to it, there is no wrong way to ski as long as you are in control of yourself.  Just because someone has a small wedge at the beginning of a turn, or ends a turn in the back seat does not mean that they are skiing wrong.  They might not be skiing the best, or most efficient way, but they are not skiing wrong. 
Josh
LVL III
PSIA-E

Who do you think has more fun on the mountain, a lvl II ski instructor practicing for a lvl III exam or a 12 year old kid going down a blue hill in a wedge with their friends?

Well said!

There is too much “bad” and “wrong” in our vocabulary.

Kurt - 21 August 2009 12:29 PM

I would thus posit that the question might be put this way:  What can we as instructors and an organization do to better develop in our students a sense of commitment to the education process and a sense of value and benefit of doing so?  Are we providing sufficient value to keep them returning?  Are the prices too high for the perceived sense of value received?  Are we engaging them in a fun way that brings them back? These ideas of course are not mine, they’ve been stated by many fellow members and published in the newsletter and etc.  But I believe they better suggest a perspective on the condition’s causes and solutions.

Kurt, L3, NW division

In general I have to agree. The majority of skiers to not want to invest the time and money to learn when they could be having fun skiing. I expect the same is true for any other recreational sport. People would rather spend the money doing it than learning it. Are most golfers taking lessons to get better? Tennis players? Bowlers? I don’t think so, people just go have fun. Only we expect skiers to be different. So it is, at least in part, a cultural issue.