Northstar Ski Resort RFID-Enables Guest Locker Rooms

Each locker's reader and lock are battery-operated, and the readers are not networked together; rather, each reader is programmed to allow the locker to be opened only when the unique ID number encoded to the specific renter's card is presented. Also encoded to the card is a range of dates during which the reader can accept the card ID. After the end date—which Northstar will program as the last day of the winter season—the locker will no longer unlock when the card is presented. The following season, a new batch of cards will be issued to season locker holders, and the interrogators will be reprogrammed to read them within a set range of dates.

Many season locker holders are also season lift-ticket holders, and Northstar could easily combine the programs, so that a person renting a locker would have an inlay embedded into their season lift-ticket instead of being issued a separate Legic card. Northstar could also migrate its current bar-code system for checking ski passes with an RFID-based system, wherein skiers and snowboarders would just pass through a turnstile at the chairlift entrance, which the readers would unlock after each read of a valid ski pass read—a popular scheme in Europe.

Andy Buckley, Northstar's director of resort experience, says the resort is not presently moving in that direction, however, for two main reasons. First, it has already invested a large sum of money in the bar-code system, which enables chair-lift operators to employ a handheld bar-code scanner to verify each ticket. Second, the manual ticket-check process also enables staff to interact with each visitor—to ask how that person's day is going, for example, as well as check if he or she has any questions or problems. With an automated RFID system, Buckley says, the resort would lose this level of customer interaction.

On the other hand, Buckley says, using RFID to access lockers and storage rooms is very convenient to the resort's visitors, who can place the cards in hip pockets, close to the level of the door handles on the main entrances, so the reader can pick up the card's encoded ID. Once the door unlocks, a visitor can open it with a free hand, rather than putting down skis or other gear and fishing a key out of a pocket, as was previously necessary. "The RF cards are sleeker [than mechanical keys]," Buckley states, "and in the locker room, we don't need a high level of human interaction for customer service."