TECHNOLOGY
Ski Resorts Across
North America
are Going
RFID
And Loving It!
By Deb Smith
For decades, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology
has been part of the culture on ski hills across Europe.
With many different inter-connected operators, and skiers
wanting to access them all, it was critical to develop a
one-pass system that tracked usage for apportioning the cost of
the passes. That hasn’t been an issue in North America, but the
technology delivers so many advantages to both skiers and operators,
RFID is fast becoming the expected norm on this side of
the pond.
It’s all about the card
RFID technology uses radio waves to identify and track tags attached
to objects. A reader captures digital data encoded in the
tags and relays this information to a networked system.
Unlike a barcode, the tag need not be within the sight line of the
reader/optical scanner, which is a big advantage with this technology.
Skiers hate long lift line-ups, having to stop and pull out
a printed barcode pass, wait for the operator to scan and then
finally head up for the next run.
snowopsmag.com | SnowOps 41