Aspen Marketing to Average Joes, Youth

In recent years, the Aspen Skiing Co. decided to change its marketing pitch, the Los Angeles Times reports. The new strategy: Convince the masses that they're welcome, despite the resort's long-standing reputation as the premier outpost of implausible wealth and snobbery in the Rockies. Aspen is currently hosting the Winter X Games, an invaluable tool to reach to the youth market. Despite its well-earned reputation for wealth, the town is charming, pedestrian-friendly and well scrubbed, with many authentic Victorian buildings. Aspen is about a four-hour drive west of Denver. The Aspen Skiing Co. operates four resorts in the area and, cumulatively, they offer 5,246 acres of terrain, with Snowmass almost the size of Mammoth. The four resorts are Aspen Mountain ("Ajax"), Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk (site of the Winter X Games) and Snowmass. To simplify, Aspen and Aspen Highlands have the steepest terrain and are not for beginners; Buttermilk is the easiest and has a terrain park with some features and jumps the size of a small house; Snowmass is a behemoth, the kind of resort that takes at least two days to fully explore.