When Colorado winter resort Aspen Snowmass launched a high-frequency (HF) RFID system provided by Skidata USA in 2008—which included HF RFID tags in all of its lift tickets, as well as RFID gates at its lifts—the lines were shortened and skiers were able to spend more time on the slopes and less time in queues. The solution was so beneficial that the resort, which includes hotels, restaurants and ski slopes on four different mountains, sought to expand its use of RFID to restaurants and stores as part of what it calls its Resort Charge program.
During the course of the past six years, the resort (owned and operated by Aspen Skiing Co.) has installed 165 RF IDeas pcProx readers, a type of low-cost USB-connected reader, at its restaurants and stores, as well as for use by its ski school and NASTAR race program. Since Nov. 1, at the start of the 2014-15 ski season, 4,048 guests have opted to use their lift tickets as a payment method onsite, according to Rob Blanchard, Aspen Skiing Co.’s director of IT support services.
Aspen Snowmass includes four separate ski and snowboarding areas on four adjacent mountains in the Aspen area. It also offers numerous stores and restaurants on its slopes, and in the neighboring Snowmass Village. Since 2008, skiers have been using lift tickets made with passive HF 13.56 MHz RFID tags—provided by Skidata—compliant with the ISO 15693 standard (see Aspen Signs With Skidata, RTP for Integrated RFID/POS System). The tickets can be read as skiers pass through one of the 48 gates for accessing lifts on the four different slopes. Each gate has four antennas (two on each side) that can read the tags from a distance of a foot or more. As such, skiers can ski right through the gate and have their lift tickets read and approved before they board a lift.
The skiing company next considered how the tickets could be used to enable hands-free payments. Blanchard notes that skiers typically carry cash or a credit card in a pocket—either of which can become lost on the slopes, and can be time-consuming to locate and remove from a pocket at the point of sale (POS).
The resort had considered using readers provided by its existing vendor, in order to read tags at the restaurants’ POS stations. However, the readers came with a serial port and cost more than $400 each, which the resort deemed too expensive. Instead, Aspen Snowmass approached Illinois-based technology solutions provider iTech Automation Inc., which recommended the pcProx readers, according to Paul Lemieux, iTech’s vice president. The readers cost about $150 apiece; once they were all installed, Blanchard says, the savings based on using the less expensive pcProx readers was approximately $54,000.
The second advantage to the pcProx readers, Blanchard reports, was the USB port connection. He says he simply received the readers, applied a small configuration file to each one and plugged them into the POS terminals, after which they started working. (However, Lemieux notes, the readers now come with the configuration file already applied).
Greg Gliniecki, RF IDeas’ founder, says the readers come with built-in functionality that captures the ID number encoded to the lift ticket’s RFID tag, and then automatically forwards that information to Aspen Snowmass’ POS-based software, via the USB connection and the user’s keystrokes. The readers, he adds, “are designed to be plug-and-play.”
When an Aspen Snowmass visitor buys a lift ticket, an employee at the ticket booth uses a pcProx reader to encode and commission the tag embedded in that individual’s lift ticket. At that point, the guest is given the option to participate in the Resort Charge program. If he agrees to join, he provides his signature as well as his credit card number, which is then encrypted and stored in the Aspen database along with the unique ID number encoded to his lift ticket’s tag.
If the skier visits the restaurant and makes a purchase, the RFID tag can typically be read through clothing, so that if he stores his lift ticket in a pocket on the arm of of his coat, he need only position his arm near the reader, and the tag ID number will be captured. He can then follow the prompts to approve the transaction and have it charged to his credit card.
Once the restaurant system was working well at the resort’s 18 food establishments, Blanchard says, his company began considering the equipment-rental areas and retail stores that it operates. The firm installed the pcProx readers at POS locations within its stores in 2011, and at the rental locations the following year.
At the stores, as with the restaurants, when a guest makes a purchase, she can simply position her lift ticket near the reader plugged into the POS computer, or hand it to a salesperson, who will then read its tag using a pcProx reader.
In the case of a rental, an individual first proceeds to the rental office and is invited to use a computer, where she can either tap her Resort Charge lift ticket next to the reader plugged into the computer, or input her name, address, age, weight and height, as well as other information that helps to determine the sizes of equipment she will need. If she is using Resort Charge, her information is already stored in the system, and she can simply select her profile and print out the rental forms, then take them to the point of sale to receive the equipment and pay, again using her Resort Charge-enabled lift ticket.
Blanchard says he has tested the Resort Charge system’s speed against that of the traditional method of inputting data to rent equipment, and has found that it can save 10 to 15 minutes per transaction. His family also uses Resort Charge, since they are regular skiers as well. In the past, he says, he would have had to dole out $12 in cash to each of his children to pay for classes, food or drinks on the slopes. “So, we would have to stop at an ATM each Saturday morning,” he states, “then stop at a store to break the $20 so we could give each of them exactly $12.” With Resort Charge, all the kids need are their lift tickets. “We set their passes up with Resort Charge. Now, they just hand their pass to the cashier for payment of their lunch.”
Last year, the company also began using the RFID system to identify the number of ski students who take classes from each instructor. The trainers are paid according to how many students they have, so it is important to know the total number of individuals who head up the slope with each instructor—a number that can then be compared against the trainer’s reported figures. To collect this data automatically, the teacher, carrying an RFID-enabled lift ticket, passes through a reader gate, followed by his class. He then circles back and moves through the gate again (after the last of his students has passed through). Later, Aspen’s management can run a report showing the instructor’s first scan of his own lift ticket, the scans of his students’ tickets, and his ticket’s second scan, thereby indicating the size of his class, and thus creating a record that can be used for payroll purposes.
This season at Aspen, Blanchard adds, the NASTAR ski race program is using a pcProx reader to identify racers, via the RFID tags in their lift tickets, as they come to the start, thereby automatically entering each individual into the timing software (see NASTAR Ski Program Speeds Up Racecourse Access). The resort continues to consider other use cases for the RFID technology, he notes, but is unable to describe any details at this time.