Using AI for Ski Resort Management

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1:34Carol Massar:Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. You may know Jackson Hole Mountain Resort for its terrain, its unmatched vertical. Are you a skier? I am. You are. Do you know them? I know Jackson Hole. They're on my bucket list. I haven't been skiing there yet. I have been there in the summer. Which is great. All right, so you need to probably get there. You could even go now because they are known for their year-round destination against the majestic Tetons. But with anything, technology, the cloud, increasingly part of doing business.

2:12Carol Massar:It doesn't matter who you are, including a ski resort. On that, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort this spring took a step toward what it says was, quote, modernizing resort operations and embracing a truly connected guest experience. So here to tell us all about it in studio in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio is Joe Hessian. He is CEO and co-founder of Snow Cloud, also founder and CEO of its parent company, Snow Partners. And then we've also got with us from Teton Village, Wyoming at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is Doug Perini. He is CEO of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Gentlemen, so good to have you here.

2:47Carol Massar:I want to start with, first of all, tell us, Joe, about what you guys are doing, your platform. Because you do a lot of different things. But you said the last few years you've really been thinking about technology and what's needed, especially when it comes to, it sounds like, resorts and hospitality. Yeah. So we're resort operators from heart. That's kind of our background, where we come from. We focus on the experience, the process. Mountain Creek in Vernon, New Jersey, American Dream. Big Snow, American Dream. me ask. And we, you know, I spent a long time actually in Lean Six Sigma designing learning areas to try to get more people their first time to come back a second and third time across the industry.

3:27Carol Massar:So Jack Welch of you. Yeah, variations evil. Love all these Jack Welch quotes. I love Lean Six Sigma. But what I found is working with some of the greatest brands around the world, trying to improve the guest experience, technology was the thing they were missing. And you hear it time and time again, legacy platforms been around for 20, 30 years, aren't evolving to the guest experience that people want today. And ski resorts are complicated. So it's taken a while to get it dialed in. Doug, so come on in on the conversation. Tell us how you got together with Joe and his team and what were you guys looking to do at your resort?

4:04Yeah, yeah, thanks. So Joe and I, I've known Joe for a bunch of years. You know, he's been well known in the industry and definitely always kind of on the forefront looking for what's new and what the opportunity is. And, you know, we were really looking to uplevel our guest experience. And the mountain speaks for itself. It is world class. The terrain is amazing. And we really wanted a platform that could help us meet the guests where they are and improve the technology side of this to make it easier for the guests. And what Joe had going on with SnowCloud seemed like right up our alley. So it's been a great process so far.

4:39Yeah, talk a little bit, Doug, just about, you know, exactly what part of the guest experience maybe was falling flat behind, you know, this partnership and really what maybe an example of, you know, something that has changed now and enhanced the guest experience. Yeah, that's a great question because our guest experience has always been a priority of ours. No matter what we do, we're always looking to make it easier, make it more fun, just not inhibit the guest experience in any way through a negative experience. experience. And, you know, that platform, the platform we had, it was great. It did like it worked really well for us for a lot of years.

5:17We were just looking for something different. And, you know, an example of what SnowCloud allows us to do is more of what guests expect in the world these days. We can, guests can buy and purchase for themselves on a mobile phone. We can sell on a mobile phone anywhere they are. We're not tied to a PC, to a POS, a point of sale in an office anymore. Now it's like we're unleashed and we can go wherever and sell anything we offer almost. So yeah, it's been great.

5:47Carol Massar:All right. So, you know, Joe, come back in on here and talk to us about kind of basic raw technology and then there's the AI layer. So I'm just curious where AI plays into all of this. Yeah, AI, like I think because we're built on modern platforms, right? It's cloud-based on Azure. It's built in modern styles. We can put LL models into it, all different types of models. I think what we're going to see for us at SnowCloud and working with our resort partners like Jackson Hole, who've been fantastic, is analytics. The things they can learn about their business. Are they pricing things the right way?

6:21Do they have the right capacities? Are things flowing the right way? Staffing. This is like one that I'm really excited about. We can now predict. Like years ago, I actually had a project. I worked for a big publicly traded ski company. and they gave me six months with MIT professors to figure out how to predict skier visits ahead of time using all the data we had. AI now can crunch numbers and do all types of analysis in ways that we can never, right? Multiple regression models and give you predictive analysis, which then can tie back to staffing levels to make sure that when you're peak, you have the right people, the right service.

6:58So it goes as deep as planning and analytics for that piece, but also for the guest. you know it's hard to book a ski vacation it's not like you know people you know they show up they need skis what type of skis do you need lessons do your kids need to be in a program how many days you're gonna see you're gonna be there for five days you're gonna ski three of those five days or five four of the five days the products can be a bit intimidating so it's it's really great to be able to um have you know you know in the future be able to give people the option to a we can customize this exactly to what you need because i think ai allows us to make it extremely customizable for a much bigger group of people.

7:34Carol Massar:So Doug, come on back because I'm just curious, what has been the biggest change? You mentioned about people can be anywhere and they can certainly access your resort. We kind of tease that you can run a ski resort entirely by phone. Is that really true? It looks like it's heading in that direction. It's, you know, being able to do that, meet the guests where they are is huge. Also, I think being able to sell whatever they want to purchase, because in the past, We've had multiple platforms because the ski industry is such a complex business. You know, we sell so many different things, services, food and beverage, lessons, lift tickets and all that.

8:12So, you know, being able to sell it all on one platform at one time and make it easy for the guests so the guests can get out and ski or mountain bike or whatever their adventure is, they can get out there more quickly and they're not held back because of our technology. You know, it's a big unlock. Yeah, yeah. Like a real-life example of what that might look like is in the past, if you had a service issue, you needed to buy something extra, you'd have to go to a spot with a computer connected to the wall to do that. Now, in theory, a server at Jackson Hole at their restaurant on the mountain could book your kids into ski school the next day.

8:47And we're not quite there yet, but the technology's there. So we're opening up the door that every person at the resort can actually enable the guests to do whatever they want. and eventually allow the guests to do that much easier themselves as well.

9:00Carol Massar:I have to just say, Doug, I'm almost kind of blown away when you said like people couldn't do things mobile before. Like why was it so difficult? Because I just think about everything that I can do on my phone. I mean, as much as I kind of hate it sometimes, I'm amazed at the amount of things. Why weren't you guys like on mobile before? You know, I think that's probably – Joe probably has a good answer for this one, but I'll say from my perspective, we are so complex that there's no plug-and-play software for the whole business. And, you know, so we were really limited by the technology that was available to us.

9:34So you couldn't call up Salesforce and say,

9:36Carol Massar:hey, I understand you do some really good software. But no, like, you're serious. Like, this is an industry that was underserved? Big time. It's 30-year-old software that's on-prem servers. And what's interesting is a lot of resorts. On-premise. On-premise, yeah. And they were trying to get, you know, people are trying to get toast to make them rental software and people trying to get Square. A lot of resorts are using Square, and it's just not native to what the resort needs as a platform. So it was a missed opportunity, and it's something that— Interesting. It's the story of old legacy platform going to modern stuff.

10:10Joe, we were talking with John Authors just a bit ago about the spend that companies have to face when they're implementing AI. And, you know, what is the biggest challenge for implementing AI for a business at this scale? Is it, you know, needing to pay for computing capacity? Is it training your employees to learn how to use this? You know, we're essentially a bootstrap tech company, right? So as a tech CEO who isn't a bootstrap tech company, you know, it's a moment of can this make our life more efficient or is it just going to cost us a ton of money to experiment? And would I rather let the big players, like I love watching you on Bloomberg talk about this and say, OK, they went all in another throttling back and thinking, thankfully, I didn't have to make that mistake.

10:56So it's trying to find the right use at the right time to make sure that we don't overspend. And ROI is important to us. So we want to make sure we're spending our AI tokens in the right spot.

11:05Carol Massar:Doug, how did you think about to the CapEx spend here? Right. Like you've got, you know, money you've got to allocate to different things. You've got to make sure that the facilities are up to snuff and that you keep your customers happy. How did you think about justifying where you were going to do this tech spend? Yeah, I think that's a great question, too. And that was a lot of discussions, a lot of conversations about investing in this or not. We do feel there's a return in this because of the guest experience and how important that is to us. So if we up level that guest experience, people are going to have a better time.

11:39They're going to come back to us. But yeah, I mean, we're constantly looking at where to put those dollars. But this was an easy one.

11:46Carol Massar:All right. Just to wrap up, we've got about a minute or so. Real quickly, I mean, we've had a heat wave. So we haven't really been talking about or thinking about snow. And we know that that is part of your world. But you guys are open around seasons. Joe, let me first just ask you, I mean, what is it? What are the trends that you're seeing with consumers kind of year round when it's not connected to snow? Yeah. So for us, other businesses like Mountain Creek and obviously big snow, we're year-round snow. So if it's hot here in New York, it's a good spot to get away. But Mountain Creek, we have a water park.

12:16But the time I've spent out at Jackson Hole, and Doug can talk about this more, but if you're in the New York area and you want to get away, Doug will probably tell you his temperature the last week, but it definitely wasn't 100. I'll tell you that much.

12:27Carol Massar:Yeah, exactly. Doug, come on in. Got about 30 seconds for you. You are around the year. People can go to your resort. What are you seeing? Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing a lot of people here right now, and the weather is amazing. I've heard about the heat wave back east, and we have a ton to do here between biking and hiking and scenic rides. We're on the border of Grand Teton National Park. Ton of activity here, and it's a beautiful must-see location in the summertime as well as winter. All right. Love it. Yeah, that area is just stunning out there. And I got to say, I've been to Mountain Creek like years ago with my daughter.

13:00Carol Massar:It's like a killer park. It's pretty wild. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Really great study. And interesting to hear what's going on. Joining up, of course, Joe Hessian, CEO and co-founder of SnowCloud. And Doug Perini, he is CEO of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Joining us right here on Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Guys, thank you so much. Bring on the snow.

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