The Wireless Ski Area - How Technology and Connectivity are Impacting the Guest Experience
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Transcript of The Wireless Ski Area - How Technology and Connectivity are Impacting the Guest Experience
Hi, I’m Dave• Director of Marketing & Sales for Sierra-at-Tahoe
• Previously Aspen Snowmass, Freeskier Magazine, Sunday River
• 16th Year in Skiing / Winter Sports
• Nickname: “Digital Dave”
• Usually staring into a screen, clicked into skis, or behind handlebars
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On The Social• twitter.com/ozskier
• instagram.com/ozskier
• facebook.com/davidamirault
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United States Average Residential Download
Speeds
Measured in Mbps from Ookla http://www.netindex.com/download/2,1/United-States/
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Whatever, Nerd
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Video Streaming Speed in Mbps Source: Netflix
SD Video
HD Video
UHD (4K)
0 7.5 15 22.5 30
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5
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AT&T Park• 41,915 Capacity
• Completely Free
• No Information Required For Connection
• Sponsored by AT&T, Duh
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Two T1 Lines• Access for administrative network.
• External access for Siriusware e-Store.
• Credit card processing.
• Webcams.
• VPN Access for Senior Staff.
• Heavy amounts of network QoS to prioritize and block certain components of web traffic. (YouTube vs. mission critical data.)
• Guest networks powered by a random assortment of DSL lines. (More about that later.)
• Incredibly costly compared to coaxial and DSL based broadband service.
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OH F&#K!!
• Tested After-Hours
• 2.15 Mb/s Down
• 0.57 Mb/s Up
• It Was Drastically Slower During Business Hours
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Digital Handcuffs• Video? Yeah right.
• Streaming audio? Dream on.
• Screen sharing? No way, Jose.
• Uploading photos & video from conditions shoots? Drive home and upload from there.
• Skype interviews with The Weather Channel? Send the satellite truck.
• Dropbox / Google Drive? Oh, you mean USB memory keys? Yeah, let’s use those for “file sharing.”
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Guest Perspective
• Their phones don’t work on the property.
• What little guest WiFi Sierra-at-Tahoe does provide is incredibly slow and has an extremely limited capacity for users.
• Buys eTicket through a vendor like Liftopia, can’t even load their barcode for redemption at the ticket window.
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Why So Slow?
• Coaxial based high speed services are not available.
• Just about at the maximum distance for DSL services.
• Considerable costs to bring in fiber optic backhaul from Highway 50 due to installation costs - digging & burying fiber.
• It’s what they were used to.
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NPS Takes A Hit
• We’re being held accountable from our guests for the current cellular and WiFi infrastructure.
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The Website Is Sloooowwww
• It’s like having lines at your ticket window, but in a web browser.
• Abandoned shopping carts like whoa.
• Screw coming back, this site is the worst!
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Customer Service As Marketing
• Customers aren’t tweeting, posting, or communicating you in realtime with social channels.
• They’re waiting until they have connectivity to address in-resort problems.
• You can’t correct guest issues as they happen.
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BOOM!• 2.15 Mbps to 19.2 Mbps
• Those network spikes are marketing trying to take the network down.
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Public WiFi• It’s a guest expectation.
• No need to re-authenticate when you roam around the resort.
• Required opt-in for your guests when they accept the terms and conditions.
• Opportunity to pass people to a “You’re Connected” page with the marketing promotion of your choice.
• Quality of Service (QoS) to ensure that everyone has a fair connection speed.
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You Already Know A Lot About These People
• First / Last
• Address
• Purchase history
• In-resort scan activity
• Arrival date
• Email opens
• App Usage
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Pair To Their Guest Record
• Additional data fields to be added to their guest record.
• See if they are an in-resort WiFi user or not.
• Routers give the ability to show how long they were connected for, and where in the resort.
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Triggered Messaging
• Specific behavioral actions from your guests trigger emails.
• Dynamic content from your existing content management platform.
• Up-sell opportunities, weather, events, F&B, retail, etc.
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Integrating Into Your App
• You need to integrate the capabilities for iBeacon / Bluetooth Beacons into your app.
• Strategically position the hardware across the resort for specific messaging that benefits your guest.
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