NSAA Press Release
During the National Ski Area Association convention in Palm Springs, CA, Mountain Pass Systems, LLC introduced three ski resort automation products for resort management, lift ticket sales, and lift ticket verification.
Mountain Pass SummitTM – is a resort management and ticket point of sale system. It allows conventional ticket sales from fixed locations but it also allows ticket sales online and from mobile devices. Using mobile computers and mobile printers, ski resort guests can purchase lift tickets at more convenient locations like at the cafeteria while having breakfast, in the parking lot while putting on their ski boots, or directly at the lifts instead of waiting on an outdoor ticket line. SummitTM operates with all existing POS and ticket verification equipment. Summit’s loyalty program allows the transfer of enrolled guests to a loyalty program that has all registered family members’ purchases added to one program for faster rewards. The loyalty program also keeps track of resort visits, lifts ridden, vertical feet skied and other statists of interest to members.
Mountain Pass KeyTM – is a universal lift ticket that allows direct to lift access. It is a reusable ticket that is online reloadable and credit card linked containing the technologies in use at ski resorts for ticket verification including linear bar code, short range (HF) RFID, and long range (UHF) RFID. In addition, KeyTM has a QR code for fast web access to facilitate ticket reloading and a magnetic stripe to allow use as a charge card around a resort. A primary card holder can designate other family members so their KeyTM acts like a prepaid charge card limiting the use of cash while also limiting spending to predetermined amounts.
Mountain Pass EntryTM – is a long range (UHF) RFID based ski lift access gate that prevents all known lift ticket abuses. Ticket transfers are the most common ticket abuse and many resort guests do not even know it is illegal but it results in millions of dollars lost to ski resorts. With patent pending biometrics, EntryTM automatically and non intrusively detects if a lift ticket was transferred. UHF RFID was developed for the retail supply chain reducing ticket costs. A bar code reader within EntryTM allows linking of barcode data and RFID ticket ID on first use making EntryTM integration straight forward for any ski resorts that already prints bar coded tickets. Patent pending mobility features allow easy movement to other lifts, maintaining a lower total cost of ownership and smoother skier traffic flows across all lifts.
These products can work together or separately providing the automation services necessary for improving the guest experience while increasing ski resort revenue and decreasing costs.
Our staff members are all skiers and our products were designed with the ski resort customer in mind, said Hal Charych, CEO of Mountain Pass Systems. I started skiing in college and there was always the temptation to game the system because it was so easy to fool the ticket checkers. Even now, decades later, things have not changed. Our goal was to improve the guest experience while preventing cheating, allowing the increased revenue to flow directly to the resort’s bottom line.
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