Liftopia Leads Dynamic Pricing Trend For Travel Industry

Expansion into Attractions, Water Parks and International Ski Resorts Brings E-commerce and Pricing Technology to Businesses and Consumers Across the Globe

Liftopia, which operates the largest consumer marketplace and resort technology platform for ski tickets and mountain activities, today announced the expansion of its dynamic pricing and e-commerce tools to global markets and new travel verticals, leading the growing trend of dynamic pricing within the tours and activities space.

Liftopia offers a suite of customized revenue management tools, services, and data analytics for ski and attraction clients to maximize pre-booked revenue with dynamic pricing based on a foundational data structure to facilitate true dynamic pricing. Since launching in 2005, Liftopia has predicted pricing empowered e-commerce as inevitable in the broader activities space. And today, several museums, family entertainment centers, attractions and international ski resorts utilizing Liftopia’s Cloud Store white-label e-commerce platform and pricing services have driven substantial revenue gains and per cap revenue growth, including Arosa Lenzerheide ski area in Switzerland and Gulf Islands Waterpark in Gulfport, Miss.

“As consumers grow accustomed to buying dynamically priced products for travel and ticketing, it was inevitable that more activities businesses and the global markets would gravitate towards these practices,” said Evan Reece, CEO of Liftopia. “In the past two years, we’ve expanded our platform to better serve the needs of ski lift companies across the globe and configure our product for numerous high-volume ticketing businesses that benefit from more scientific pricing and world-class e-commerce software.”

Driving Revenue with Dynamic Pricing Tools

In 2005, Liftopia pioneered revenue management for high volume ticketing businesses with an initial focus on dynamic pricing at ski areas. Over the past 13 years, the company has defined the industry standard for dynamic pricing strategies to drive pre-sales of all mountain experiences, from lift tickets and season passes to ski rentals and mountain biking. Today, almost 20 percent of ski areas in North America use Cloud Store (backed by a full-time partner support team) and revenue management tools, and hundreds of ski areas use Liftopia.com to reach a large consumer audience and yield predictable return on marketing spend — an important consideration for any activity business selling online.

Liftopia’s Cloud Store is a unique offering, because unlike options historically available to ski and attractions businesses, it was built specifically as a revenue management platform, rather than as an add-on to an existing legacy system. Brands that use Cloud Store not only benefit from insights across hundreds of resorts using the same pricing model, but also the expertise Liftopia offers from operating its own e-commerce brand.

Liftopia’s proprietary, data-driven pricing model considers real-time demand and purchase behavior to generate optimized prices for every day. This pricing engine is built on millions of data points of consumer behavior online, enabling it to yield optimized prices that automatically update in response to consumer demand. The model combines a partner’s own historical data with Liftopia’s model to design a strategy that grows online bookings and revenue overall.

For insights and analytics, clients have access to customized dashboards and reporting, including detailed business metrics such as revenue, online customer behavior, regional comparisons / benchmarks, and upcoming attendance. The data structure, the expedited improvement cycle, and historical data allows revenue managers to understand if their pricing strategy is working with increased clarity.

Crossing Continents: Increasing Ski Pre-Sales in Switzerland

Liftopia expanded into the European market during winter 2017/2018, partnering with an elite ski resort in Switzerland, Arosa Lenzerheide, to impact business with a custom-tailored solution for online ticket sales. An idyllic winter sports destination with 225km of available terrain, Arosa Lenzerheide is the largest ski resort in the Graubünden region of Switzerland. Liftopia’s web shop and dynamic pricing model helped the resort grow pre-sales, and drove greater pre-sales, by maximizing online pricing efficiency — successfully battling the challenge of a few seasons of varying snow conditions and rising costs for Europeans to travel to ski in Switzerland.

For its first season of partnership with Liftopia, Arosa Lenzerheide’s primary goal was to double online ticket revenue, which was vastly exceeded when the resort achieved a pre-sold revenue increase of more than 26x. Concerns about moving to a new pricing strategy, such as growing total resort revenue alongside greater pre-sales, and how ticket yield would be impacted by dynamic pricing, were quickly quelled.

“We only get one opportunity to maximize sales for each day of the ski season, and partnering with Liftopia helped us successfully develop a strategic pricing strategy that would generate the most revenue every day of the season, despite weather conditions and other factors that influence demand,” said Christian Wyrsch, Sales Manager at Arosa Lenzerheide.

Expanding Across Travel Verticals: Pre-Sale Success at Water Parks and Attractions

Gulf Islands Waterpark is a large seasonal water park located on the Mississippi Coast. Their goal to improve guest experience and achieve greater operational predictability led to Liftopia’s dynamic pricing model for pre-sales. Because tickets sold are date-specific, the team could more easily plan operations and staffing on a daily basis using the wealth of information and automated reporting available through the Liftopia platform. As a result, Gulf Islands Waterpark saw a 21% increase in pre-sold revenue online, in just their first season working with Liftopia. In addition, the attraction saw a 50% growth in percent of revenue sold online vs. the year prior, allowing for a reduction in the number of ticket sellers required — which achieved a staffing goal as well. Per capita revenue per ticket sold online increased $5, while per capita revenue per ticket sold from any channel went up $8.20.

“In a short amount of time, we shifted customers from buying at the ticket window to advance purchase online, exceeding our online revenue goals” said General Manager Mark Moore. “This allowed us to achieve major wins such as getting rid of numerous coupons and discounts, clarifying our marketing message for customers, and collecting a wealth of customer information for future marketing.”

Liftopia operates the largest online and mobile marketplace and resort technology platform serving the ski and mountain activity industry. Skiers and riders can purchase lift tickets, equipment rentals, meal vouchers and more from more than 250 ski areas in the U.S, Canada and Europe, with savings of up to 80% off walk-up window rates when purchased in advance. For businesses, Liftopia is the leading provider of dynamic pricing and e-commerce solutions for ski lift companies, water parks, and other attraction providers. Over the past 13 years, Liftopia developed the only e-commerce webshop solution (“Cloud Store”) with a revenue management model, data structure, and toolset explicitly focused on dynamic pricing. Founded in 2005, the company’s focus is to help its partners maximize online pre-sales, using dynamic pricing, where pricing responds to demand and changes over time for every day of the season.