Vail Picks New Line With UHF RFID-Powered Passes

Each season pass contains an RFID inlay made by KSW Microtec, using G2XM RFID chips from NXP Semiconductors and an antenna designed by Zebra Technologies to optimize both near- and far-field tag reads. Urwiler says this antenna will help ensure, when read at the base of a lift, that the handheld units used by lift ticket scanners can quickly zero in, at close range, on the RFID tag embedded in the season pass carried only by the customer standing right before them. The overhead interrogators, meanwhile, will be able to read all tags within their larger interrogation zone.

To produce the season passes—that is, to print the graphics while also encoding the embedded RFID inlay with a unique ID—Vail is employing RFID printer-encoders made by Zebra.

Vail Resorts sells four types of season passes and is embedding RFID tags in all them, including the Epic Pass, which provides unlimited lift access at the company's five resorts, as well as at Colorado's Arapahoe Basin ski area. The RFID-enabled passes cost Vail a premium, compared with its prior passes, though Urwiler declines to discuss costs at this time. Still, the firm plans to extend the cards' usefulness by having returning pass-holders retain them from one season to the next (for that reason, "2008-2009" is not printed on the new passes). The printer-encoders can crank out the completed passes in the same amount of time as the printers it used in the past, Urwiler says, so the ski areas issuing them will not suffer a slower production time.

Urwiler deems the transition to RFID-based season passes well-timed, as the handheld bar-code scanners previously used at the lifts are now old and would have needed upgrading anyway. (The new Intermec handhelds contain bar-code scanners that will be used to scan the bar codes printed on day-passes, which visitors skiing for just one or a few days will carry. The scanners will also act as a backup method of reading the RFID-enabled passes, as they will be printed with a bar code as well.)

Other than continuing to evaluate the use of fixed-position readers on selected ski lifts, Vail has no active RFID tests scheduled for the coming winter season. However, Urwiler says, the company does plan to continue examining other ways in which RFID could be of use to the Vail resorts. "We run hotels, restaurants...we have lots of different businesses, and we think this single piece of plastic [the season pass] can be leveraged for more than just accessing a lift," he says, hinting that RFID-based payment for food or services or hotel room access-control applications could be among future applications.