Les leviers de différenciation face à une innovation banalisée en station de montagne : attractivité des snowparks et positionnement des stations

Terrain parks appeared in mountain resorts in the late 1990s. Their creation has widely participated in the renewal of winter sports’s offer in the 2000s. Quickly becoming widespread, they turned out to be essential, urging the managers of winter sports resorts to favour differentiation in a competitive context. This article, based on a multi-site fieldwork that combines ethnography, interviews and documentary analysis, focuses on the plurality of these areas and outlines the various choice made by the managers of mountains resorts. Based on the concept of key factor of success, the proposed analysis classifies results according to three dimensions: spatial, technical, and socio-cultural. These elements are to be considered in order to promote terrain park’s attractiveness. Due to its strong presence in our results, the emphasis in this article is put on the third dimension that pushes to overcome a purely technical reading of terrain parks’ development