#ski tech

[dreamofsketch]

I amused myself at my work as a ski rental tech today by trying to convince everyone around me to go snowshoeing instead. Coworkers, boss, customers, everyone. Literally setting up someone’s skis like, “but have you considered the merits of snowshoeing? Today is the perfect kind of snow for it. Much better choice than skiing today.”

[mountaindayz]

European Ski Tech Ecosystem 2013

With a share of 44% of skier visits the Alps are by far the largest winter sport region worldwide. However, the alpine destinations have experienced a negative average growth rate over the last four seasons.

The main question for lift companies and destinations is how to break this trend and how to market more effectively to skiers and snowboarders? This includes both addressing more and new skiers as well as motivating winter sport enthusiasts to ride or ski more often.

Investing in "quality of service", i.e. snow making and modern lift installations, is one thing but how to reach out to these skiers is another. You can see Austrian lift companies advertising on UK television channels and on billboards at the Zurich main station. For instance, marketing spending of the top 3 Swiss lift companies is 2.9% of their revenues last season, which results in a total annual lift company marketing spending estimate of CHF 22 mn in Switzerland (given total transport sales of CHF 757 mn). All in all not a very large marketing budget to spend.

In this context and as a player in the field, the MountainDayz team has been asked frequently about the innovations in the European Ski Tech Ecosystem and how we fit in. So, we decided to help our customers and other lift companies to navigate this field by publishing the European Ski Tech Ecosystem 2013.

Click here for a larger image.

We differentiate between marketing, sales, enabler and adjacent in the European Ski Tech Ecosystem 2013.

Marketing refers to the many marketing options, which a lift company can choose to engage with. These services are paid and driven by the available marketing budget, see above.

Sales (also: performance marketing) is a very different sector. It is typically not driven by marketing budgets, as the fee structure is commission-based. Some ski resorts have a proprietary website that includes the possibility to book ski passes online. In this case, online ticketing is mostly based on RFID-based booking (providing date-specific access rights to a smart card, which you can buy at the ski resort). The same is offered by some external service providers, too. Skiers can sometimes find ski pass deals with online deal providers and can redeem the coupons throughout the season. The niche MountainDayz is capturing is e-commerce combined with yield optimizing capabilities. With date-specific prices and limited availability ski passes can be booked online just like air fares or hotel rooms in order to optimize demand for any given day (please read our press kit for more details).

Enablers are incumbent and new technology services that provide on-site access and online booking solutions that are a solid basis for this ecosystem. In the adjacent section we can find offers and services, such as ski schools booking and ski equipment rental, which have a direct correlation with ski passes and can be packaged together with ski passes.

Sources: company websites and annual reports, 2013 International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism, Seilbahnen Schweiz