Holland is probably the number one wintersport country in Europe. That sounds very strange because it is a dead-flat country with little more than two handful of indoor and outdoor ski opportunities. Like ice skating that does not hinder us in our effort to enjoy -and excel in- wintersports and skiing in particular. The Dutch are per capita one of the most active skiers in Europe. That is a fact. We virtually own Gerlos, Ischgl, Val Thorens and Saalbach. Moreover, the Dutch are also very prominent in the online wintersport information scene.
We at SkiWeather.eu conducted an extensive study (among 2.7 mln Dutch websites) to track the 10 most influential wintersport websites in Holland. It is not very hard to draw up a list of ‘popular’ websites, but we wanted to know which one has the highest economic impact and – authority. We used advanced data science -a proxy- to answer the question.
The website with the highest absolute economic impact is: Sneeuwhoogte.nl, followed by Wintersporters.nl (Milq Media), Wintersportweerman.nl (Hajo Smit) and the website of the Dutch skiing association (NSKV). They are in the same league. Sneeuwhoogte.nl resides among 3800 Dutch websites (out of 2.5mln) with the biggest economic impact. It joins websites like margriet.nl (women’s magazine) and bnn.nl (Dutch broadcasting company). The nearest business neighbour is dejongintra.nl (economic impact score of 51), followed by bizztravel.nl (score: 52) and sunweb.nl (score: 53).
Based on link authority Wintersporters.nl outperformes Sneeuwhoogte.nl by nearly 2:1. The Dutch Skiing association (#4) does in this respect way better than the number 3 (Winterportweerman.nl) by 9:1.
The number of forwarding domains seems to be a substantial disruptive factor on the economic-impact score. For instance, Wintersportweerman.nl and the Dutch skiing association (NSKV) apply nearly 20 forwarding domains in order to boost traffic. If we correct the economic impact for the number of forwarding domains than the top 3 is as follows: SkiInfo/Onthesnow* (Mountainnews), Wepowder and Sneeuwhoogte.nl. This picture feels more realistic somehow. The aforementioned two are also important players beyond our borders.
Lately, SkiInfo is challenging well-established competitors like sneeuwhoogte.nl and wintersporters.nl. SkiInfo is a powerful international company and a mayor provider of skiresort information and snowreports. In addition, Wepowder is a strong and appreciated brand in a niche market (free-ride) with also a strong base abroad. We predict that within a year SkiInfo will settle high in the top 5 of Dutch wintersport websites with the biggest economic impact, soon followed by Wepowder.
Finally, there is a newcomer we can not ignore anymore: it is Alpenweerman.nl. Currently it has an economic impact score of 24. We expect it to enter the top ten soon because of it’s authority and focused network relations. Winterportlive.nl or Snowrepublic.com is most likely to pay the price for it. We predict the same trajectory for Skiinformatie.nl which seem to lend it’s position from the partnership with snowplaza.nl.
Ranking was last updated in January 2, 2017 (table order based on ranking 2016)
| Ranking 2017 | Hostname | Economic impact** 2016 | Economic impact** 2017 | Alexa rank 2017 | Link authority | Twitter Followers | Facebook Likes | Forwarding domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | sneeuwhoogte.nl | 48 | 41 | 283780 | 131 | 16100 | 134391 | 6 |
| 1 | wintersporters.nl | 45 | 47 | 211421 | 203 | 12900 | 107348 | 12 |
| 4 | wintersportweerman.nl | 44 | 35 | 606261 | 16 | 2950 | 9560 | 18 |
| 5 | wintersport.nl | 43 | 35 | 837536 | 133 | 3936 | 9831 | 20 |
| 3 | snowplaza.nl | 34 | 35 | 515803 | 98 | 1216 | 43333 | |
| 7 | skiinfo.nl | 32 | 32 | 1227199 | 85 | 996 | 2 | |
| 8 | skiinformatie.nl | 31 | 31 | 1714121 | 36 | 1215 | 21101 | 4 |
| 9 | wepowder.nl | 28 | 28 | 868195 | 32 | 3091 | 40468 | 3 |
| 11 | snowrepublic.com | 26 | 14 | 5819710 | 24 | 2383 | 8800 | 8 |
| 6 | wintersportlive.nl | 26 | 33 | na | 5 | 3762 | 13727 | |
| 10 | alpenweerman.nl | 24 | 24 | 1759609 | 17 | 5105 | 8419 |
The detailed list of scores (xls)
*) SkiInfo is not a Dutch company. Mountain News Corporation, publisher of OnTheSnow -the world’s most visited snow sports online and mobile platform- acquired Skiinfo in 2012. MNC’s headquarter is based in Boulder CO.
**) The economic impact score is on average four points higher in the high-season (mid-february) for the top league.