Adapting Lift Tickets for the 20/21 Season
- Jenni Buonanni
Aspenware Commerce is helping resorts adapt for this unique season by working with resorts to leverage its advanced features and RTP integrations
Executive Summary
Aspenware has worked with southern hemisphere resorts to navigate their in progress 2020 season and surveyed North American resorts to understand their plans for the 20/21 ski season. Aspenware Commerce offers the following advanced features that can be leveraged for ticket sales in this unique climate. Aspenware will be also publishing articles on passholder reservations, rentals, lessons and more in the coming weeks.
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Inventory on Access Products
As covered in our inventory article, many resorts may need to track and possibly enforce inventory on lift products.
A few high level notes on inventory
Even if you don’t plan to enforce inventory limits, Aspenware is encouraging each resort to add inventory to access products before they go on sale in the case that inventory enforcement is required. Even if the cap on the inventory pools is an unreachable number, if inventory is added before sales start, it’s easier to adjust throughout the season as needed.
Resorts requiring reservations for passholders experienced “no shows,” so consider over-allocating inventory for certain inventory buckets, like passholders.
Because inventory may need to be closely tracked for access products this season, 2 of 3 day tickets will likely turn to 2 day tickets so that resorts can predict and limit skier numbers with more accuracy.
If you want to display inventory limits to guests, Aspenware has enhanced its pricing calendar to optionally include available inventory levels.
With potential or perceived scarcity this season, resorts should also be prepared for extreme spikes in volume as the public learns about the realities of the 20/21 season and jumps on opportunities to reserve their ski dates. Resorts should start adjusting their products, infrastructure, and marketing strategies now to accommodate this unprecedented traffic.
Unprecedented Traffic
North American resorts are learning from Australian resorts who saw unprecedented traffic when they announced they were selling all tickets with limited availability. Traffic was so extreme that the entire season sold out within the first several days and was offline often during that period. Australian resorts who rolled out their ticket dates incrementally fared slightly better but still saw unprecedented volume and some outages. Even if you don’t plan to announce limited inventory, with so much unknown about this upcoming season and Vail’s passholder reservation announcement, guests may perceive scarcity regardless and behave accordingly. Aspenware is encouraging resorts to be prepared for very high traffic levels when tickets go on sale.
Aspenware has been vigorously optimizing its platform to be able to support many more concurrent users and will be rolling out a new optimized version in October. Concurrently Aspenware will be publishing guidelines on how to optimize your ecommerce site and Unity server infrastructure to best handle the heavy loads that could be commonplace this winter. Resorts who follow guidelines outlined by Aspenware can expect to be able to handle more concurrent users than in previous seasons, however, there will be thresholds and limits dependent on setup and infrastructure. Aspenware Commerce is hosted in Azure, and application services can be scaled for high traffic events. Load balancing for both application services and for Unity can also be implemented.
However, even with scaling, the possibility that your user demand will surpass store capacity exists. In the event traffic to the site exceeds capacity, the only real viable solution to prevent outages will be to implement a third party queuing system such as Queue-it. Queue-it is a virtual waiting room used by many high-traffic sites such as TicketMaster and AXS. Queue-it can be optionally implemented with Aspenware’s solution at an additional license fee.
Resorts should not expect to sell and market products business as usual; Aspenware recommends having a plan a, b and c, such as a plan to gradually roll out tickets, stagger marketing communications, hold off announcing limited inventory as long as possible, and possibly implement Queue-it. Best case a plan b and c are ready and never have to be used.
Line-Busting with Technology
Southern hemisphere ski destinations required that all products were bought online for the 2020 season, keeping ticket lines short. If you have RFID, getting access reloaded onto existing media and getting media into customers’ hands without contact (through media kiosks offered by Axess SKIDATA), will make the biggest dent in ticket window lines. If you don’t have RFID, there are contactless media distribution options available through Aspenware Commerce and RTP as well, such as shipping media and print at home. Beyond reload and media distribution, the next largest line buster will be enabling promotional ticket types to be sold and fulfilled online. These promotional and partner tickets that are typically handled at the ticket window can be transitioned online using advanced features available in Aspenware Commerce.
If your resort isn’t already leveraging Aspenware’s reload, print-at-home, or shipping capabilities, consider implementing these options to shorten lines this season. For RFID, whether your resort uses SKIDATA or Axess, Aspenware commerce integrates into your system so guests can quickly add additional ski days to existing media and head to the lift without a hassle. If your resort doesn’t have RFID reload, or if your resort is looking to pre-sell a limited number of parking spots, consider setting these products up with print at home functionality. Print at home emails guests an access barcode from RTP that can be scanned at the lift, or parking lot (guests don’t need to actually print out these qr codes as they can pull the email up on their phones for scanning).
Many resorts are adding contactless kiosks that distribute media (sold by Axess and SKIDATA) to their base areas. These kiosks are integrated into Aspenware Commerce and Aspenware Arrival products. In Aspenware Commerce, a QR code is added to confirmation emails that can be scanned at a kiosk, resulting in all associated media being printed on demand. If you haven’t reached out to your Aspenware representative and have Axess Pickup Boxes or SKIDATA Skiosk plans for your resort, contact them with your desire to integrate these into your ecommerce.
Aspenware offers shipping that is deeply integrated into RTP, Aspenware Commerce supports setting a days out threshold for shipping, so if you want to only offer shipping to guests purchasing at least 7 days in advance, you can. However, in Aspenware’s evaluation of performance, it did find that adding the delivery step to high volume products, like a standard lift ticket, can impact performance. Aspenware does not advise adding the delivery/shipping step in checkout to high volume products if it can be avoided. If your resort is implementing kiosks or print at home for lift tickets, shipping media may be less important.
Consider moving redeeming discount tickets typically fulfilled in person, (i.e. buddy tickets, reciprocal resort tickets, promo tickets, Mountain Collective, etc.) online. Aspenware’s service team has worked with many resorts to set up fenced promotional products and has a wide set of features to accommodate these use cases. Talk with your Aspenware representative about your ticket redemption products ASAP as the best setup may involve providing 3rd parties with a set of unique codes and hidden URLs that can be printed on distributed media before sales begin. A product can be set up so that only certain contacts can purchase, or only guests with a specific code or voucher can checkout with this product, or a combination of these.
Military and College tickets that typically require guests to show their military or college ID in person can be offered online with peace of mind. Aspenware integrates with SheerID; SheerID validates the guests military or college eligibility against their databases, and when approved, provides them with a unique code that allows them to purchase a gated promotional product in your shop. This code can be used once or many times over a time period that you decide they are valid for. If getting setup with SheerID is not possible for this season due to the cost (it’s about a dollar a validation) or setup effort, consider instead adding an prompt to these promotional products in your store to collect Military or College ID and college name, and only ship out media or fulfill the products once they have been vetted by your resort.
Simpler Products
Many resorts are considering simplifying their lift ticket product offerings. In addition to limiting steeply discounted 3rd party tickets, some resorts are considering simplifying age categories and offering less of a price break for multi-day tickets. Thredbo, an Australian resort, charged full price for tickets rather than their typical aggressive dynamic pricing model, didn’t offer a price break for multiple days of tickets, and still was sold out many days of the winter. If that is too extreme for your resort, continue to use dynamic pricing for the 20/21 season but consider strategies such as extending the window when full priced tickets are sold online.
In Aspenware’s initial performance evaluation, more complex product configurations impacted performance during heavy load periods. Aspenware is optimizing its software and providing recommendations to deal with load more effectively; however, resorts should also be optimizing their product builds to maximize their store’s performance. Resorts may be required to choose between highly complex and easy to package products, that in any other season Aspenware would encourage the use of, and a performant store. Complicated, multi-step purchase flows, such as complex dynamic pricing, multiple conditional add ons, and additional data collection during the checkout experience can all affect store performance.
Requiring Pre-Commitment
Products that allow guests to pay up front for a single day, or several days, and then ski when they want should be reconsidered to be products that allow guests to pay up front and then later commit to days through booking an online reservation product. Perhaps guests can be issued vouchers for each day they have “pre-paid” for and they can use these vouchers to redeem and reserve their dates online. A reservation product could be a $0 product that is fenced to require that the assigned guest is in fact a frequency card holder and has n days left to reserve. This flow could also work for Mountain Collective reservations.
Next steps
Define your inventory strategy for access products with resort leadership. Share this with your Aspenware representative as soon as you have a direction as this influences Commerce setup.
Consider how marketing strategies and announcements can be staggered to avoid exasperating the issue of unprecedented traffic this season.
If you plan to use queue-it reach out to your Aspenware representative asap.
Come up with plans a, b and c for how your resort will handle unprecedented traffic when tickets go on sale, and continue to stay engaged with Aspenware’s published Commerce guidelines around this season.
If you are implementing RFID, SKIOSKs or Pick Up Boxes for the first time, contact your Aspenware representative ASAP, as additional configuration is required.
If you are considering configuring print at home or shipping on your products and would like additional training and configuration support, contact your Aspenware representative with your specific needs.
If you have promotional or partner tickets (i.e. Military/College discount, EGB, Warren Miller, Mountain Collective, reciprocal resort, etc.) you would like to put online, setup time with your Aspenware representative now to come up with a configuration plan and timeline. (Professional service fees may apply if setting up validated procedures, however Aspenware recommends working with us to set these up to ensure they won’t cause performance issues.)
If you are considering adding SheerID for military or college validation this season, contact SheerID and Aspenware immediately to start this process as there is setup time required
Consider simplifying the highest volume products, like lift tickets, to allow for optimal speed for these products (i.e. remove checkout steps like delivery and personalize, remove rental add ons, simplify dynamic pricing models)
Consider requiring a reservation for DTL, frequency card, Mountain Collective days, and any day ticket products. Work with Aspenware to create these $0 reservation products online, requiring a specific product voucher. You can also check eligibility of the person assigned to the product.