Digital Hits the Slopes at a Colorado Ski Resort

Digital Hits the Slopes at a Colorado Ski Resort:

At Colorado’s popular ski resort, Vail, digital isn’t just another marketing gimmick; it’s a way of upping the ante when it comes to providing the ultimate ski experience. And the resort has come up with some incredible ideas that give their patrons just that.

Being on a ski holiday is a bit like being in a vacuum: we’re out there, carving it up, swooshing down the slopes either on our own, with friends or family, kind-of suspended in time and space, living a surreal reality where the only things that matter are here and now. What run are my friends on? Where will we meet up? What will we eat for lunch? Did I ski this run faster than the last time? Am I going to rock this black diamond? Did anyone see me do that jump?

Vail’s Epic Mix technology, the latest and greatest ski pass, provides digital answers to all of these questions as well as services above and beyond just a simple lift ticket. It’s got everything: automatic links with social networks, personal stats, achievement pins to reward personal bests, photo-sharing, mobile utilities and a whole lot more.

To all the businesses or services that think digital doesn’t really touch us, it’s more for cultural or intangible services or products (in other words, that they are “digitally immune”), it’s time to stop and think. Long and hard.

With Vail having already launched this initiative, don’t you think that all surrounding ski resorts have no choice but to follow suit if they don’t want to lose business? After all, what teenager doesn’t want to ski at a resort equipped with digital toys? Sooner or later a new kind of cleverly packaged digital offering is going to impact each and every sector of business…whether they like it or not.

It’s only a question of time and access to power and decision-making for a generation of believers….