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11.03.2016

Andorra - Axess systems for a whole country

It happens not that often that a whole country is equipped by one single provider. Axess makes it happen in Andorra.

If you go to Andorra you always start with palm trees. Either the ones in Toulouse or the ones in Barcelona. Within a two hours drive away from each town you reach the international city tucked in the Pyrenean mountains. With seven ski resorts that offer 1.500km of ski runs and host 7,8 mil visitors per year Andorra is a big player when it comes to winter tourism.

Axess AG provides all access systems to every single ski resort in the country. Meaning that from Val Nord, which is the most northern region with the ski areas of Pal, Arinsal and Arcalis to Paz de la Casa, Crau Roig, Soldeu and El Tarter which run under the brand GrandValira. They are all equipped with Axess SMART GATES in the version flap – either floor or gantry mounted. The popular gantry mounted gates allow grooming easily because that way the gates can be moved out of the way of the snowcat. This saves precious time when servicing the slopes. Not only this feature is a main factor for ski resorts to choose Axess, the gates have to be as fast in ticket-reading as in solid quality of hardware as well. Jordi Galceran, Director of Ticketing of GrandValira, told that there are 600.000 ski tickets sold per year only in his area. One important fact is that the ticket readers are able to verify a ski ticket within 0,1 seconds. Speed is Axess’s friend: Not only the ticket readers, but also the Axess SMART PRINTER is a fast device. 33% of all tickets – in total 200.000 tickets – are printed on only two printers. With the new version of the Axess SMART PRINTER 600 this will even be faster in the future and help Andorra to satisfy the ski guests which will increase to 9 mil in 2019, which means a growth factor of 4%!


13 years ago Maurice Zinniger, Managing Director of Teamaxess France, the French subsidiary of the Axess Group, started travelling to Andorra and installed the first system in Soldeu / El Tarter. Since then his work and the quality of the systems convinced step by step all the other ski areas to rely on the solid access-systems made in Austria. The future of Axess lies in developing resort solutions which offer not only the ticketing- and access management for a ski area but also integrate and offer rental management, locker management, a customer relationship tool like an App that connects the skier with the various attractions of the area as well as a ticket shop and a solid CRM tool. No wonder that the whole country of Andorra is convinced.

Jordi Galceran puts it into these words: “We are glad that we found such a great partner in Axess that we can always rely on and that goes along with our future plans in such a professional way.”