Vail Resorts is enlisting potentially millions of skiers into its marketing efforts next season.
Tapping the soaring trend of uploading photographs onto social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, the continent’s largest resort operator on Wednesday unveiled the second generation of its wildly popular EpicMix.
Where last year’s application focused on vertical feet, with skiers accumulating pins and points for their descents, this season’s EpicMix is all about photographs.
“There is no one who comes on vacation who doesn’t care about photos,” said Vail Resorts chief Rob Katz.
This year, the company is installing radio-frequency chips inside all its nearly 300,000 passes and all the day tickets the company sells, eliminating the traditional paper ticket. An army of professional photographers at each of Vail’s six ski areas will be able to scan those passes, shoot still photos and action shots and immediately upload the pictures — free of charge — into each ticketholder’s EpicMix account.
The idea is that those pictures will flood the Internet, sending snowy images of Vail’s ski hills across the virtual world.
“We want people to take these photos and share them with other people,” Katz said. “Candidly, every resort everywhere should want the same thing.”
Last year, EpicMix harvested accolades and awards for its innovative approach, which drew 15 percent of Epic Pass holders. A typical social-media application usually engages 1 to 2 percent of eligible users. EpicMix users last season posted 300,000 comments on Facebook accounts, sharing their snowy vacation stories with more than 30 million people.
This year, the application will be available to four or five times as many Vail Resorts guests. While the low-resolution shots are available at no charge, the company is charging $19.95 for higher-resolution, print-ready copies.
Last year, at least one man in Breckenridge raised privacy concerns over the use of radio-frequency embedded passes and the company tracking passholders, but Katz said his team fielded no complaints from guests over privacy last season.
Last season, the most prolific user of EpicMix, Charles Alexander of Silverthorne, skied every day, catching one of the first chairs at Arapahoe Basin on Oct. 25 and the last chair July 5. The retired college professor skied 237 days and logged more than 9 million vertical feet. Next year, he will be vying for a Guinness World Record, which will rely on EpicMix data to confirm the record.
“I will be using the photo thing for sure,” said the sexagenarian, who relished time on chairlifts and shuttle buses with fellow EpicMixers. “A lot were surprised. They thought I was a young man.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
