Alta Opts for RFID Lift Tickets

To ski a second day, the visitor can bring the card back to the ticket office and pay $54. The user can also renew the card at Alta's Web site by selecting the desired date, then keying in payment information and the unique ID printed on the card. When payment is received, the software controlling the gates enters the unique ID into a database of IDs that can be accepted on the day the skier will return. Reloading online means visitors can proceed directly to the chairlift upon arriving at the area, rather than stopping at the ticket office.

Also printed on each card is a bar code that bears the same unique ID printed on the ticket and encoded to the chip. This enables skiers who purchase an Alta-Snowbird lift pass ($84 for the first-time purchase, $79 per day thereafter when reloading card) to utilize the card either at Alta's RFID access gates or at Snowbird's chairlifts, where ticket checkers employ handheld bar-code scanners to read the tickets.

In addition, Alta outfitted nearby hotels that sell its ski lift tickets with RFID printer-encoders, allowing them to print out and encode the cards. All of the POS data, as well as the IDs encoded to the cards, are maintained centrally by Alta.

The chairlift ticket checkers—a staff that used to number 40 across the mountain but has now been reduced to just one checker at each lift—carry handheld RFID readers, which they use to randomly audit skiers moving through the gates. If the tag in a season's pass is read, the holder's photo, name and other information, such as zip code, appear on the small monitor built into the handheld, and the ticket checker can use this to ensure that the correct person is carrying the pass (using someone else's pass is another means of illegally accessing a chairlift).

Maughan says the transition to RFID-based ticketing has greatly changed customer perceptions regarding ticket checkers. "They used to be the bad guys, checking everyone's ticket [and looking for frauds]," he says, but now they have the role of helping to get skiers through the gates quickly. When a gate won't open for a skier, he adds, it's usually because a cell phone that person is carrying is blocking the RF signals from the interrogator's antenna, preventing it from reading the tag. Ticket checkers help explain this common problem so skiers can remedy it by keeping their phone and ticket in separate pockets, and quickly be on their way.

Maughan says he's not yet been able to analyze whether the transition to RFID-based ticketing has led to increased revenue for the mountain. However, he states, it's clear that customer satisfaction is up.