I recently returned from a family ski trip to Colorado, and to be honest, I wasn’t ready to come home. Don’t get me wrong, I love Buffalo, despite the newsworthy winters and tumultuous sports teams (next year is our year!). But I must admit that it was nice to get away from the record cold winter we had and trade that in for 50 degree temperatures and Rocky Mountain skiing.
We spent our time at Keystone, a resort under the Vail Resorts umbrella. I’ve been lucky to ski out West before, but no matter how many times you travel to the Rockies, the breathtaking view never gets old. You can’t help but find yourself constantly grabbing for your phone to take pictures or stopping mid ski slope just to look around. Even if the skiing wasn’t the best, I still would have had a great time just because of the scenery. Lucky for us, we had amazing conditions and a not so shabby view.
Ok, I’m done reminiscing; let’s talk about the real reason I’m writing this post.
Technology.
It makes the world go ‘round. Some of us can’t get enough of the latest gadgets and apps, while others would love to return to the Dark Ages.
My plan on this vacation was to try and unplug a little bit; spend less time scrolling my Twitter feed and focus on spending time with my family doing something we love. And I did. Honestly, I can say I spent a lot less time on my phone than usual. But that full escape from social media and technology just didn’t happen, despite spending 6-8 hours a day on the slopes. It would have been a lot easier if I didn’t have five bars of 4G coverage, even at the peak of the mountain.
Luckily, Vail Resorts understands that we want to be connected with technology 24/7, even when we’re enjoying the outdoors. So instead of trying to change that mentality, they’ve found a way to incorporate it into the skiing/snowboarding experience you have at one of their resorts, which include Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Canyons, Heavenly, Northstar, Kirkwood, Afton Alps, and Mt. Bright.
They’re a great example of a company that knows their audience well and effectively caters to their wants and needs. And as any marketer knows, you probably won’t get very far if you don’t understand your audience.
There’s an app for that
To build this connection between nature and technology, they’ve partnered with EpicMix. EpicMix is a website and mobile app that “captures your ski and snowboard experience” like no other. An “Epic Pass,” the formal name of their ski/snowboard pass, is a scannable plastic ID card, much like a college ID or metro pass. Every time you go through the queuing line for a chairlift, you pass under an RF scanner that scans the pass, records the chairlift you’re boarding, and credits you with a specific number of “vertical feet.”
Vertical feet measures the difference in altitude from the bottom of the chairlift to the top. So in order to get back down to that lift, regardless of the trail you choose, you have to travel that number of vertical feet. It doesn’t directly translate to the number of miles you’ve skied/boarded because that depends on the route you take down the mountain (you’d need GPS for that), but it certainly gives you an idea of how much ground you’ve covered.
In addition to simply tracking your progress, any pictures taken of you by an EpicMix photographer on the mountain are automatically uploaded to your account. There is no obligation to buy, and you can share them for free directly from the website or app to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
EpicMix also allows you to track your progress in the mountain’s Ski and Snowboard School, measure race times on one of the certified race courses (with real benchmarks set by skier Lindsey Vonn), check snow and terrain reports, research lodging and ticketing information for your next vacation, and view web cams to check out the crowds and conditions.
Similar to earning Foursquare “badges,” EpicMix awards you “pins” for reaching vertical goals or riding certain chairlifts. By logging into your free account, you can view the accomplishments of your friends and family and “compete” for more vertical feet or pins. There is a Leaderboard page that ranks every EpicMix user by their “total points earned,” calculated by the number of days skied/snowboarded, pins earned, and number of photos taken.
At the end of every ski day, EpicMix sent me an email summary of my activity for the day, and to be honest, I did find my competitive side coming out. Seeing how many vertical feet I skied and how many pins I earned made me want to earn even more the next day. Especially if I was even going to consider putting this on social media. I didn’t want people to think I was slacking!
Even on vacation, I couldn’t quite pull myself away from the mobile technology that occupies so much of our time these days. But you know what, that’s perfectly fine with me. If anything, it reminded me how valuable our work at Mainstreethost really is.
We are in an unavoidably mobile-centric, technology-driven world, and that’s certainly not about to change. The world is at our fingertips, literally, and the desire to constantly be connected is more prevalent than ever. So what did I learn from all of this? Well, I learned that technology never takes a vacation, even at 11,000 feet.