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« Previous Story | The Industry Report Home Page | Next Story » 'flaik' Brings GPS From Down Under To Track Skiers On North America's FlakesBy Craig Altschul 
The flaik concept introduces unique GPS satellite-based technology that can be used both as a guest locator on ski slopes and as another twist on the social marketing trend that has everyone from toddlers to grannies intrigued. It's a combination safety net for children enrolled in ski and ride classes and a snowy Facebook for bragging rights back at the condo or bar. Kenny says everything in the system - hardware and software - was built by his company and is proprietary. Kenny and industry veteran John Siewierski, flaik's Sales and Marketing Director, were showing off the system and touting its early successes and future promise to attendees at the recent Mountain Travel Symposium at Keystone and will do the same at next month's National Ski Areas Association convention in Florida. The pair held countless sales sessions with individuals and headlined a workshop during the MTS Forum on social marketing and evolving technology. flaik technology launched this just-ending winter at Copper Mountain and Steamboat resorts in Colorado. Both resorts - part of the Intrawest group - use flaik in roughly the same manner. GPS-enabled tags are assigned each individual. The system then can locate individuals, allow instructors and school supervisors to monitor students, deliver run-by-run statistics, and literally relive every run with family and friends at day's end. Instructors, for example, receive an alert if the distance between a kid and his or her instructor is too far away. Students can go online to flaik's Web site and see how many runs they made and where, how fast they went, even how much air they got. Ski school officials at the resorts have gone on record praising the flaik system. Copper's Ski and Ride School Director JP Chevalier said, "flaik is the first to successfully integrate mobile technology and GPS to reliably increase performance and safety." Steamboat's Vice President of Skier Services Jim Schneider uses the flaik program as an illustration to spin his resort's "commitment to customer service." He says this cutting edge technology affords parents peace of mind when their children are enrolled in his ski and ride school programs. Siewierski points to more tangible benefits for resorts getting involved. "There's no upfront capital in this revenue share/lease model," he says, "and we are committed to support the resorts we work with." Siewierski says the flaik system has now tracked some 75,000 students in ski and ride schools and has "demonstrated our ability to track more than 1,000 students in one hour." Helly Hanson's Big Mountain Battle used flaik technology to track racers in its extreme racing series. But, what about holes in coverage that are essentially in the hands of mobile service providers such as Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and the like? After all, this program operates on the high slopes of the rugged Rocky Mountains. "So far, we've been able to get vendors to expand their coverage to avoid holes," Siewerski counters. "It's really an economic issue with the vendors because, at a large destination resort, flaik can mean the equivalent of 1,000 cell phone accounts. That's not something they ignore in today's economy." What It Means: flaik seems to be the real deal in providing a safety net for kids and should give them and their parents plenty to twitter about at day's end. Mobile coverage, out of flaik's hands, is another issue, however, but that will play out as flaik expands to other vast mountain terrain. But, it most certainly appears to offer resorts a low-risk investment in customer service and safety, a potential new revenue source, and might help satisfy our seemingly insatiable thirst for social networking. So, thank you, mate. All the best. « Previous Story | The Industry Report Home Page | Next Story » |
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