- 6 weeks ago
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00:00I want to start with, first of all, tell us, Joe, about what you guys are doing, your platform,
00:08because you do a lot of different things, but you said the last few years you've really been
00:12thinking about technology and what's needed, especially when it comes to, it sounds like,
00:16resorts and hospitality. Yeah, so we're resort operators from heart. That's kind of our background,
00:21where we come from. We focus on the experience, the process. Mountain Creek in Vernon, New Jersey,
00:26American Dream. Big Snow, American Dream, yes. I spent a long time actually in Lean Six Sigma
00:33designing learning areas to try to get more people their first time to come back a second and third
00:37time across the industry. So Jack Welch of you. Yeah, exactly. Variation's evil. Love all these
00:42Jack Welch quotes. Love Lean Six Sigma. But what I found is working with some of the greatest brands
00:48around the world, trying to improve the guest experience, technology was the thing they were
00:53missing. And you hear it time and time again. Legacy platforms have been around for 20, 30 years,
00:59aren't evolving to the guest experience that people want today. And ski resorts are complicated,
01:03so it's taken a while to get it dialed in. Doug, so come on in on the conversation. Tell us
01:08how you
01:08got together with Joe and his team, and what were you guys looking to do at your resort?
01:16Yeah, yeah, thanks. So Joe and I, I've known Joe for a bunch of years, you know, he's been well
01:21known
01:21in the industry and definitely always kind of on the forefront looking for what's new and what the
01:26opportunity is. And, you know, we were really looking to uplevel our guest experience. And
01:32the mountain speaks for itself, it is world class, the terrain is amazing. And we really want a platform
01:38platform that could help us meet the guests where they are and improve the technology side of this
01:43to make it easier for the guests. And what Joe had going on with SnowCloud seemed like right up our
01:48alley. So it's been a great process so far. Yeah, talk a little bit, Doug, just about, you know,
01:55exactly what part of the guest experience, maybe it was falling flat behind, you know, this partnership
02:02and really what maybe an example of, you know, something that has changed now and enhanced the guest
02:07experience? Yeah, that's a great question. Because, you know, our guest experience has always been a
02:13priority of ours. No matter what we do, we're always looking to make it easier, make it more fun,
02:17just not inhibit the guest experience in any way through a negative experience. And, you know,
02:23that platform, the platform we had, it was great. It did like it worked really well for us for a
02:28lot of
02:29years. We were just looking for something different. And, you know, an example of what SnowCloud allows us
02:34to do is more of what guests expect in the world these days. We can, guests can buy and purchase
02:40for
02:41themselves on a mobile phone. We can sell on a mobile phone anywhere they are. We're not tied to
02:47a PC, to a POS, a point of sale in an office anymore. Now it's like we're unleashed and we
02:54can
02:54go wherever and sell anything we offer almost. So yeah, it's been great. All right. So, you know,
03:00come back in on here and talk to us about kind of basic raw technology. And then there's the AI
03:06layer. So I'm just curious where AI plays into all of this. Yeah. AI, like I think because we're
03:11built on modern platforms, right? It's cloud-based on Azure. It's built in modern styles. We can put
03:17LL models into it, all different types of models. I think what we're going to see for us at SnowCloud
03:23and working with our resort partners like Jackson Hole, who've been fantastic, is analytics. The things
03:29they can learn about their business. Are they pricing things the right way? Do they have the
03:34right capacities? Are things flowing the right way? Staffing, this is like one that I'm really
03:39excited about. Yeah. We can now predict, like years ago, I actually had a project. I worked for a big
03:45publicly traded ski company and they gave me six months with MIT professors to figure out how to
03:50predict skier visits ahead of time using all the data we had. AI now can crunch numbers and do
03:58all types of analysis in ways that we can never, right? Multiple regression models and give you
04:03predictive analysis, which then can tie back to staffing levels to make sure that when you're
04:08peak, you have the right people, the right service. So it goes as deep as planning and analytics for
04:13that piece, but also for the guest, you know, it's hard to book a ski vacation. It's not like,
04:18you know, people, you know, they show up, they need skis. What type of skis? Do you need lessons?
04:23Do your kids need to be in a program? How many days are you going to ski? You're going to
04:26be there
04:26for five days. You're going to ski three of those five days or four of the five days. The products
04:30can be a bit intimidating. So it's, it's really great to be able to have, you know, you know,
04:36in the future, be able to give people the option to, Hey, we can customize this exactly to what you
04:40need. Cause I think AI allows us to make it extremely customizable for a much bigger group of
04:46people. So Doug, come on back because I'm just curious what has been the biggest change you
04:50mentioned about people can be anywhere and they can certainly access your resort. We kind of tease
04:56that you can run a ski resort entirely by phone. Is that really true?
05:01It looks like it's heading in that direction. It's, you know, being able to do that, meet the
05:07guests where they are is huge. Also, I think being able to sell whatever they want to purchase. Cause
05:12in the past we've had multiple platforms because the ski industry is such a complex business. You know,
05:18we sell so many different things, services, food and beverage lessons, lift tickets and all that. So,
05:24you know, being able to sell it all on one platform at one time and make it easy for the
05:30guests. So
05:30the guests can get out and ski or mountain bike or whatever their adventure is, they can get out
05:35there more quickly and they're not held back because of our technology. You know, it's a big unlock.
05:41Yeah. Yeah. Like, like a real life example of what that might look like is, uh, in the past,
05:45if you had a service issue, you needed to buy something extra, you'd have to go to a spot
05:49with a computer connected to the wall to do that. Now, in theory, a server at Jackson Hole at their
05:56restaurant on the mountain could book your kids into ski school the next day. And we're not quite
06:00there yet, but the technology's there. So we're opening up the door that every person at the
06:06resort can actually enable the guests to do whatever they want and eventually allow the guests
06:09do that much easier themselves as well.
06:11I have to just say, Doug, I'm almost kind of blown away when you said like people couldn't do things
06:16mobile before. Like, why was it so difficult? Cause I just think about everything that I can do on my
06:21phone. I mean, as much as I kind of hate it sometimes I'm amazed at the amount of things.
06:26Why weren't you guys like on mobile before?
06:30You know, I think that's probably Joe, Joe probably has a good answer for this one, but I'll say from
06:35my
06:35perspective, we are so complex that there's no plug and play software for the whole business.
06:41And, you know, so we were really limited by the technology that was available to us.
06:46So you couldn't call up Salesforce and say, Hey, I understand you do some really good software.
06:51But no, like you're serious. Like this is an industry that was underserved?
06:56Big time. It's 30 year old software that's on-prem servers.
07:00And what's interesting is a lot of resorts on premise. Yeah. And they were trying to get,
07:04you know, people are trying to get toast to make them rental software and people trying to get
07:08square people. A lot of resorts are using square and it's just not native to what the resort needs
07:13as a platform. So it was a, it was a missed opportunity and it's something that, um, it's,
07:19it's the story of old legacy platform going to modern stuff.
07:22Joe, we were talking with, um, John authors just a bit ago about, you know, the spend that
07:28companies have to face when they're implementing AI. And, um, you know, what is the biggest challenge
07:34for implementing AI for a business at this scale? Is it, you know, needing to pay for computing
07:39capacity? Is it training your employees to learn how to use this?
07:44You know, we're, we're essentially a bootstrap tech company, right? So as a tech CEO, who isn't
07:49a bootstrap tech company, you know, it's, it's a, it's a moment of, can this make our life more
07:54efficient or is it just going to cost us a ton of money to experiment? And would I rather let
07:58the
07:58big players, like I love watching you on Bloomberg talk about this and say, okay, they're, they're,
08:02they went all in another throttling back and thinking, thankfully I didn't have to make that
08:07mistake. So it's trying to find the right use at the right time to make sure that we don't
08:12overspend and ROI is important to us. So we want to make sure we're spending our AI tokens in the
08:17right spot. Doug, how did you think about to the CapEx spend here, right? Like you've got,
08:21you know, money, you've got to allocate to different things. You got to make sure
08:23that the facilities are up to snuff and that you keep your, your customers happy. How did you think
08:29about, you know, justifying where you were going to, to do this tech spend?
08:34Yeah. Um, I think that's a great question too. And that, that was a lot of discussions,
08:38a lot of conversations about, you know, investing in this or not. We do feel there's a return in this
08:43because of the guest experience and how important that is to us. So if we uplevel that guest
08:48experience, people are going to have a better time. They're going to come back to us. Um, but yeah,
08:53I mean, we're constantly looking at where to put those dollars and, um, but this was an easy one.
08:58All right. Um, just to wrap up, we've got about a minute or so real quickly. I mean,
09:02we've had a heat wave, so we haven't really been talking about or thinking about snow. And we know that
09:06that is part of your world, but you guys are open around seasons. Um, Joe, let me first just ask
09:11you, I mean, what is it, what are the trends that you're seeing with consumers, um, kind of year
09:16round when it's not connected to snow? Yeah. So, so for us, you know, other businesses like
09:21mountain Creek and obviously big snow, we're year round snow. So if it's hot here in New York,
09:24it's a good spot to get away. Um, but you know, mountain Creek, we have a water park,
09:28but the time I've spent out with Jackson hole and Doug can talk about this more, but you know,
09:32if you're in the New York area and you want to get away, Doug will probably tell you
09:36his temperature the last week, but it definitely wasn't a hundred. I'll tell,
09:38I'll tell you that much. Yeah, exactly. Um, Doug, come on in,
09:41got about 30 seconds for you. Uh, you are, um, around the year. People can go to your resort.
09:46What are you seeing? Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing a lot of people here right now. And the
09:50weather is amazing. I've heard about the heat wave back East. Um, and we have a ton to do here
09:55between biking and hiking and scenic rides. We're on the border of Grand Teton National Park, ton of
10:01activity here. And it's a beautiful must see location in the summertime as well as winter.
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