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Jackson Hole Mountain Resort initiated a project in the spring to modernize its operations and create a connected guest experience.
The ski resort industry has been technologically underserved, with many operators relying on legacy, on-premise software platforms that are 20 to 30 years old.
The Snow Cloud platform enables Jackson Hole Mountain Resort guests to make purchases on a mobile phone and allows staff to process sales anywhere without being tied to a fixed point-of-sale PC.
The Snow Cloud platform is cloud-based and built on Microsoft Azure.
Snow Cloud plans to use AI to provide its resort partners with predictive analytics for pricing, capacity management, and staffing levels.
Joe Heshin believes that in the future, AI will enable Snow Cloud to offer highly customized ski vacation packages to a much larger group of people.
Prior to adopting Snow Cloud, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort used multiple, separate technology platforms to manage its various business lines such as food and beverage, lessons, and lift tickets.
The operational complexity of the ski resort business means there is no single "plug and play" software solution that can manage the entire business off the shelf.
As a bootstrapped tech company, Snow Cloud's strategy for AI implementation is to focus on use cases with a clear return on investment to avoid overspending on experimentation.
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort justified its capital expenditure on new technology by anticipating a return on investment from an improved guest experience, which is expected to increase customer retention.