High alpine skiing the Italian way: RFID-tickets as a gift

Generosity lies in the Italian hospitality ever since. Sestriere took that heritage seriously and offers their skiers RFID-tickets for free: The village in the Piemont Alps lies on a mountain pass with the same name and an altitude of 2.035 meter between Val Chisone and Val di Susa. The founder of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli senior built in 1930 the first two hotels and two ropeways, one of it a reversible aerial ropeway. Later on there was built one more hotel, a ski-jump and the first chairlifts as well as Europe’s highest 18-hole golf course.

Together with Claviere, Sauze d’Oulx, Cesana Torinese and Pragelato Sestriere united to one big ski area under the brand Via Lattea. The most famous slopes known from the competitions are Banchetta, Fraitève and Sises. Altogether Sestriere has 146 slopes and 92 ropeways and chairlists. With a length of 400 kilometers in slopes, of which 120 kilometers can be prepared with manmade snow, Sestriere offers twice longer slopes than Wengen (CH). Axess AG provides all access systems to every ski area within Via Lattea. They are all equipped with Axess SMART GATES in the version turnstile floor mounted. For being host and training center for handicapped skiers two gates are equipped with long paddle arms to guarantee a proper ADA entry. Not only this feature is a main factor for ski resorts to choose Axess, the gates have to be fast in ticket-reading as well. One important fact is that the Axess ticket readers are able to verify a ski ticket within 0,1 seconds. With the new version of the Axess SMART PRINTER 600 this will even be faster in the future and help Sestriere to satisfy the ski guests and increase the skier-days for the region. On top of that, Axess as the ticket provider as well was able to deliver tickets with RFID technology for such a reasonable price that Sestriere gives them to their skiers as a gift. By doing this, the skier can reload the ticket via webshop and is able to start skiing without having to go to the cashier any more.

Danilo Poda, Director of Sales Italy, knows every single detail of the area. For the last 16 years he personally took care of this important customer and turned a customized solution for Via Lattea into reality. And he has even more products to offer in the future: The new resort solutions Axess RESORT.LOCKER and Axess RESORT.RENTAL, that Axess AG is developing at the moment, will offer an integrated locker-management and rental-feature to complete the product line. Only one ticket is needed to operate gates, lockers and rental-equipment. So Danilo Poda will be smiling when he travels to Sestriere next time. Because one part of the future already turned into reality: The Axess CONNECT.APP – where a ski resort can offer their skiers a great service by having all info on your smartphone: Online ticket shop, weather conditions, open slopes, restaurants in the ski area, social networks and even individual services that the ski area offers (like speed, altitude, etc.). In the case of Sestriere maybe their bonus booklet that they use for co-marketing.