Vail Resorts is a Colorado-based mountain resort company that boasts seven ski resorts in the U.S., as well as lodging and real estate businesses. The company is using consumer data to constantly engage, understand, and build relationships with its customers.
One of the ways Vail Resorts enhances and gathers data is through their EpicMix app (which launched in 2010). This mobile application offers skiers and riders a way to share their mountain experience. Some of the features include:
– Tracking vertical feet skied
– Live stats from the mountain
– Using smartphones as lift tickets
– Viewing photos taken by resort photographs
– Seamless integration with Facebook
Customers are continuously engaged with EpicMix through its chat functions, photo sharing, and gamification of the mountain experience with points, levels and pins. With a product that offers value to the customer, it returns insightful analytics.
And so enters big data. EpicMix collects a large amount of user information, including length of time skiers spend on the mountainside, what times they prefer to ski, the number of runs they complete per ticket purchase, lift usage, and more. This data allows Vail Resorts to send personalized communications to their customers. It also provides Vail Resorts a way to measure the impact of various factors on skier traffic, such as weather or holidays. By collecting analysing and using customer-specific big data, Vail has the ability to optimize their product and service strategies, targeting the right customers at the right time.
