When guests in Åre open the SkiStar 360 app, they can see queue status on the lifts in real time. A green marker means no queues, yellow a little queue and red that there is a queue. The same colour marking is shown on digital screens at selected lifts. What began as a pilot project during an Easter break has now been in use for two years, and ahead of the winter season the service is a natural part of how guests plan their day on the slopes.
Behind the service is the mountain tourism company SkiStar together with Bumbee Labs, which provides analysis and forecasting of visitor flows both outdoors and indoors. The solution is built on artificial intelligence and machine learning combined with anonymised reading of Wi-Fi signals. It is completely free for guests and has two purposes: to make it easier to plan the day and to even out guest flows across the ski area.
“This service, which is built into the new SkiStar 360 app and on digital screens at the lifts, is a pilot project carried out at selected lifts in Åre. It is completely free for our guests and aims to improve things for our guests and even out guest flows in our ski areas,” said Niclas Sjögren Berg, chief operating officer at SkiStar, when the service launched.
”Using AI makes an incredible difference”
The guests’ response was clear within the first few weeks: of those who had seen and used the service, 85 percent found it a very positive experience.
“It is absolutely fantastic that this AI-based analysis can produce current queue status. For the guest this is perfect. It contributes to a great experience, and what we aim for in developing this 360 app is to make things simpler for our guests. Using AI makes an incredible difference,” says SkiStar’s CEO Stefan Sjöstrand.
The initiative was part of a larger investment programme in which SkiStar put around half a billion Swedish kronor into the business, including new express lifts, electrified vehicles and artificial intelligence.
Anonymous measurement at its core
The queue status is built on the same method Bumbee Labs uses for visitor measurement in retail, transport and city centres: anonymised Wi-Fi analytics where no personal data is produced, approved by a European data protection authority. For a ski destination, this means guest flows can be measured and forecast without a single guest being identified.
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