Many people visit resorts to relax and take a break from their daily routines. However, for resort managers, disconnecting from technology is not an option if they want to provide a great guest experience. To ensure guest satisfaction, including catering to their preferences, reducing wait times, and improving services, resorts need to have a constant flow of data and reliable connectivity. Leading companies like Vail Resorts have adopted 5G technology to enhance both their customer-facing and internal services across all their properties, improving the overall guest experience.
In the latest episode of "The Restless Ones," Jonathan had the privilege of sitting down with Tim April, EVP and CIO of Vail Resorts. Tim emphasizes that the key to their success lies in his team's unique approach, where they prioritize being business leaders first. Whether it involves monitoring snowfall and trail grooming or providing guests with access to reservations and payments while on the mountainside, Tim's team equips visitors with all the tools and information required for a flawless vacation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey everyone, Welcome to the Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
As always, my focus is on exploring the intersection of
technology and business by having conversations with the most forward
thinking leaders. Throughout my career, I've covered everything from massive
parallel processing to advanced robotics, but what truly inspires me
(00:24):
are the stories of innovation and transformation Today. Our guest
is Tim April, executive vice president and Chief Information Officer
of Veil Resorts. Tim has spent more than two decades
working with Veil Resorts, starting with running a PeopleSoft implementation
and now serving as CIO of the entire company. Veil
(00:47):
Resorts is a world leader in luxury destination based travel,
and while cutting edge technology might not be front of
mind when you're skiing down a mountain, it absolutely is
a fundamental part of the strategy. From creating a helpful,
informative and interactive guest experience designed to make your stay
a memorable one, to using data to improve operations across
(01:10):
multiple resort properties, Vail Resorts leverages tech in general and
connectivity in particular to great effect. The company and its
subsidiaries operate numerous resorts, which presents an interesting challenge when
it comes to rolling out new initiatives across different company properties.
But Tim loves a challenge. Before I dive into some
(01:31):
fresh powder, I mean Tim's experience as CIO, I wanted
to get to know him a bit more. Tim, Welcome
to the Restless Ones. I'm really jazzed to have you
on the show. I'm excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, thanks for having me. Super excited to have this
conversation with you today and looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, me too. And I always like to get started
on this show getting to know a little bit more
about my guest. I'm curious is how did you first
get interested in technology?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So just a quick background for me, I grew up
in Saint Louis, Missouri, pretty big family, but I would
say not on the forefront of technology as far as
how I was growing up, and so I would say
pre college a little bit of an insecurity for me
that I felt like other people were probably further along
than I was. That transition for me was I went
to Notre Dame and was trying to figure out a degree,
(02:27):
and I was really good at math, kind of like science.
So I went into engineering and that was really driven
by the fact that I just like solving problems. That
is something that's interesting to me, and that's really what
engineering is all about. I picked chemical engineering not really
knowing what jobs would be in chemical engineering, but it
just sounded like an interesting degree and kind of fit
(02:47):
this challenge, something new to me, hard to do, but
really complex problems to like breakdown and solve. As I
went through my undergraduate degree, I started realizing if I
wanted to do like big innovative things in chemical engineering,
that would really require getting a PhD to get that
kind of flexibility and latitude. And what worked out for
(03:07):
me was Anderson Consulting was the world's largest technology consulting
company at the time, and they had a huge office
in Chicago, which is only a couple hours drive from
Notre Dame. And what they love to do is hire
engineers and then they would train them on whatever the
consulting gig was that they needed to do. And that
was a perfect transition for me. So I was able
(03:27):
to use my engineering degree and go work for a
big consulting company not really even knowing what I was
going to be focused on, and funny enough, they threw
me right into technology consulting in my first role, and
that really got me on this journey that I've been
on for quite some time now.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Wow, it's funny because our backgrounds have a lot of
parallels in them. I grew up in rural Georgia and
was interested in technology, but the resources weren't really there
for me to dive into it, certainly not when I
was going to school. And I also worked for a
consulting firm. It's just funny to hear those little steps
because I kind of have an inkling into your experience
(04:05):
and I love speaking with engineers. So can you talk
a bit about coming to Veil Resorts and how your
career there got started and sort of your journey throughout
the organization.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah. So the transition for me out of consulting to
being in a ski resort town was an interesting one.
We were on vacation over New Year's Even nineteen ninety
nine actually, and my brother and I decided while we
were on vacation that we could work for ourselves and
buy a three bedroom condo, turn our third bedroom into
an office, and we could ski as much as we
(04:37):
wanted and just figure out how to make a living
in the ski resort. So I literally flew back to Boston,
quit my consulting job, and drove from Boston to Breckenridge
and started living in Breckenridge, Colorado, and I wanted to
get really involved in the local community there, so I
did all kinds of things that I never would have
guessed that I would do. I tutored for competitive high
(04:58):
school ski racers for Team Summit. Jeffrey Lyons was the
host of a pretty big film festival, the Breckenridge Festival
Film at the time. I got really involved in that.
I think I read one hundred and fifty screenplays in
about eight weeks everyone that got submitted, and then helped
the judges pick the winners. So I was doing all
kinds of things, which is what you do when you
live in these resort communities. But there was a disconnect
(05:20):
because I had no affiliation with the resort. So I
actually went up to the HR office at the resort,
which was like half a mile from my condo, took
up my resume, and ironically Fail Resorts was doing a
PeopleSoft implementation and they needed the exact expertise that I
had done at Anderson Consulting and knew how to help
them wow.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, first of all, Tim, I have to say, the
description of your career decision there I think more than
merits your inclusion in the restless ones. I don't think
I've heard a more restless description in all the episodes
that I have hosted so far. So clearly you did
end up saying with Veil Resorts, you ended up being
(06:02):
an integral part of that team. And I'm curious if
you are at like a party and someone says, so,
what do you do for a living, how do you
actually describe your job in a way that makes sense
to them.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
There are two parts of that answer. One is everybody
loves to talk about fail Resorts and their experiences as
gears or snowboarders and want to share all the great
things that they did and any feedback that they might have.
So it's always a lot of fun actually to talk
about my job because people are so interested and they
want to engage, and they really want to share the
(06:34):
experiences that they've had at our resort. On the it side,
I think it's always interesting. It's kind of surprising me,
but I still get a lot of conversations that view
it as sort of an order taker back office type
of function, and it couldn't be further from the truth. Nowadays,
pretty much any business strategy that's being implemented, whether it's
(06:54):
a corporate function or an operational line of business, has
a technology foundation underneath that is critical to actually achieving
the business outcomes that those groups are trying to achieve.
So the interesting part about my job and my team's
job is we get to work on everything. We get
to work with every function, every operation, and we get
to be a part of developing the strategy and implementing
(07:17):
the strategy, both on the technology enablement side, and it's
full partnership and what we're trying to do. So yeah,
I still think there's a misconception out there that I
get a lot as far as what it actually does
versus what the modern sort of role is of an
IT organization.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, I think the issue I encounter is that most
people's experience with it is when they have to put
in a ticket because something has gone wrong with whatever
system they're working on, and so they start to view
it as being reactive and don't realize how proactive it is.
I think that's a great way to kind of segue
into talking about technology over at Veil Resorts. On this show, obviously,
(07:54):
we love to talk about connectivity, and I was fascinated
to start reading about some of the connectivity the based
features at Veil Resorts. Can you talk a bit about
how that connectivity feature ends up providing opportunities to delight visitors.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, I think it starts with a few things. For us,
As you probably have seen, we grew through acquisition of
a lot of resorts over a relatively short period of time.
I think one of the most important decisions we made
early on for the North American resorts was to do
full integrations. So once we acquired a resort, we put
them on all of our systems and processes as quickly
as we could without being disruptive. And that puts us
(08:31):
in a position now where when we deploy something new
or drive and innovation, everybody gets the benefit of it,
and all of our integrated resorts, which is really powerful.
Ski resorts are complex trips to plan and there's just
a lot that goes into it. Takes a lot of
time and effort. For us, we're always trying to help
our guests do as much in advance as they possibly can,
(08:52):
you know, select their pass or lift ticket, book their rentals,
book their ski school, think about the F and B
experiences that they want to have. So the more that
we can get them to do before they show up
at the resort, the better experience that they're going to
have in resort. However, once they get in resort, there's
still a lot of complexity. It could be on mountain
weather conditions, it could be what got groomed that night,
it could be what trails are open. There are all
(09:13):
kinds of real time pieces of information that are going
to help the guest. And if they also didn't do
some things in advance, now they're in a situation where
they have to do transactional things in the resort that
maybe takes longer for them to actually get on the mountain,
which is what the experiences that they came for. So
for us, the transition to mobile and thinking about the
role mobile can play is really once that guest leaves
(09:35):
their hotel room, our ability to interact with them and
communicate with them is on their mobile device, and that's
how we need to make sure that we're getting them
all the information they need to have the best experience
they possibly can and then figure out even if they're
making those decisions kind of late in the process. How
can they self serve or get support through their mobile
device as quickly as possible to remove any friction points
(09:57):
in their experience. And the Integrated Network of Resorts allows
us to deploy that everywhere across North America, all at once,
which is great.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, I think it's brilliant. On the backside, where we've
got all these different data points coming in, I'm curious
how is Veil Resorts taking advantage of that technology on
that side.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, we've been on this journey of being a data
driven company for a long time and I think that
is also back to the integrated Network of Resorts is
super powerful because we can get input and data from
all the different experiences that our guests are having because
they don't just go to one resort, they go to
multiple resorts. So for us to be able to aggregate
that data, it does a couple things. One, it gives
us more insight into our guest preferences and what works
(10:40):
for them to allow us to communicate with them in
a more personalized way that's relevant to them. So that's
incredibly powerful. On the operational side, though, we spend a
lot of time on how do we make our operations
more efficient? And what this has allowed us to do
is we now have enough resorts that we can aggregate
data but then also build benchmarking us how one resort's
(11:01):
doing something versus how another resort's doing something, all within
our company. I would say early on in the company's history,
there was still a little bit of competitiveness between resorts.
They were competing for guests, and we worked really hard
to get past that, and now we have a culture
that's focused on sharing best practices and building benchmarks. Building
KPIs learning from each other, and that spans across every
(11:22):
operation we have. That could be snowmaking, it could be grooming,
it could be working through the parking and arrival process
when guests are showing up our resort, what's the most
efficient way to actually manage that flow of traffic. So
they are all these different opportunities, but I think the
power has been the combination of the data and then
being able to share that across the resorts to learn
what's the optimal way or best way to do something.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
To me the ability to collect and analyze data at
the scale that we're capable of now. When I first
started talking about big data, you couldn't really analyze all
that information. It's a totally different world now where we're
able to analyze data at scale and start drawing conclusions
are more rapidly than I could have envisioned ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, and one of the challenges of the business that
we're in is our primary revenue generating season is about
a four month period in the winter. So to your
point on the ability to aggregate data, analyze it quickly,
drive insights, implement them. We're not a typical company that
just has quarter after quarter to make improvements. We have
a very small operating window, so it is really important
(12:26):
that we can learn quickly and implement changes and iterate,
be like very agile in our thinking throughout our winter season.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
We talk a lot about high speed connectivity on this show,
where we talk about things like five G implementation or
Wi Fi six, this ability to have high through put,
low latency connections. I'm curious is Veil Resorts exploring that
and if so, in what sort of implementations.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah. If you think about our operating footprint, we're also
unique in that we have some resorts that are absolutely massive.
I mean some of our biggest resorts. You're talking about
thousands and thousands of acres without a ton of infrastructure
in it. So the entire twenty plus years that I've
been here, we've been talking about cellular coverage, getting our
network actually out to remote locations where we can use
(13:21):
Wi Fi as a benefit. So we are literally every
single year analyzing cellular coverage and advancements in cellular and
working with all the major providers and other partners so
that we can extend as much coverage as we can
to all the skiable train at all of our resorts.
So that's an ongoing process and ongoing investment because it
just enhances the experience. We look for Wi Fi and
(13:42):
areas where maybe there's a benefit to doing that, which
may be a base area or something where people are
doing things on their phone that may require connectivity. And
then I think the other part for us that's really
important is when we think about mobile app design, we
have to think about the fact that you may not
have great coverage everywhere you are on the mountain on
some of our really big mountains, and so we have
to consider that in app design. So what can you
(14:05):
do offline versus what do you need connectivity to do
and so we really do emphasize and focus on downloading
the app, downloading the critical pieces of data that you need.
So it's our goal to get as much connectivity as
we can across the board and as much bandwidth as
we possibly can for our guests, and also design around
the fact that we're going to have gaps.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
And also on the behind the scene side, I imagine
that there's a lot of value in being able to
collect those different data points about things like mountain conditions
so that you can proactively make those decisions that will
have the minimum impact on guest experience. And that's where
I start seeing really interesting possibilities. Whether you're talking about
Internet of Things implementations or you're talking about a simple
(14:47):
camera setup that is by located with like a cell tower,
these are things that come to mind when I start
thinking about ways of integrating this connective technology.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, so I think part of that is our network
extended throughout our resorts so that we can actually be
connected to the things that you're talking about, like webcams, snowcams,
like the snowmaking system or the grooming system, things like that.
So that's a big part of it. The first challenge
is how do we get the data and have the
real time information? The second is how do we communicate
that effectively in a real time manner to our guests
(15:19):
in a way that works for them. And that's where
our big focus is on the new mobile app that
we're developing is really having our guests understand there's one
place to go. And then the data on guest preferences
is important as well, because there's a ton of information,
a ton of real time data. So how do we
provide something that's relevant to you, that you care about
and is real time? How do we know that about
(15:40):
you versus all the information that we could be sending
out to all of our guests.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, Tim, you made an excellent point. Access to information
is one thing. How do you communicate it effectively is,
as we all know, a huge challenge. So that to
me is really exciting because having the experience of feeling
like your visit has has been tailor made to you,
there's no way to put a value on that. So
I think that that's one of those things that this
(16:06):
technology can really enable to that end. I'm also curious
I read a little bit about the AI assistant Emma
can you talk a bit more about that and what
Emma's role is in all of this.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, you know it fits actually in the conversation we
were just having. We have a lot of folks in
our base areas that are walking and on mountain that
are answering guest questions all the time. Right It's like
where do I drop my kids off at ski school?
What's groomed today? Where should I go skiing? All of
those types of things. So, right now, it's more of
a human interface once the guests are in resort, and
so the idea is, well, how do we use that
(16:39):
mobile device, that smartphone to allow the guests to self serve,
which in many cases they want to do, and if
they need to contact an agent, that we make it
really really simple for them to get in touch with
somebody that has those answers. Emma was also an early
adoption of sort of natural language processing machine learning AI capabilities,
and we used a text based interface to do it
(17:00):
because we felt that the guests could be comfortable just
reaching out via text, not having to worry about an app,
and we could answer their questions for them. So we
learned a ton through that experience, both on how the
technology works and what kinds of questions our guests were
asking and how we could service them going forward. The
plan going forward within the my Apic app is back
to the same thing, not sending our guests multiple places,
(17:22):
but saying, Okay, if you want that information, we have
a mobile app for you that has all of these
different features and communication methods and a support feature. So
I think a little bit more of an integrated approach
that ties into this mobile strategy of one place to
go for our guests.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Wow, fascinating. I'm curious also if you can maybe tell
us a story. I realized that real life stories don't
typically have the neat beginning, middle, and end, but perhaps
kind of walk us through a project as an engineer
that goes from perhaps the earliest stages of ideation into
the planning and development all the way to implementation and
(17:58):
what that looks like at resorts.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yeah, again, back on the innovation side. One of the
areas that we're always looking at our where friction points
in the guest experience or where are there lines that
people have to wait into and what can we do
to mitigate that. One of the projects that I think
fits into this category of kind of ideation to resolution.
That was interesting because I wouldn't have predicted the outcome
when we started it. The problem statement was for some
(18:23):
of our peak days and peak times, we can have
line weights that people don't want to wait in at
our ticket windows or pass offices. And one of the
constraints that we have that are similar to other ski
resorts is they're physical building constraints. So you have a
capacity limit on how many point of sales can you
have open, how many people can you have working at
that specific base area. And so we said, okay, well
(18:44):
that's an interesting problem to solve because we're probably not
going to build more buildings by next season. So in
the absence of that, what can we do? And so
we use data. So what we did is we said,
we're going to analyze all the data and all the transactions.
We're going to look at how the wait times vary
across different locations and resorts. We're going to understand the
different transaction types that occur, and which ones are complex
(19:08):
and which ones are simple. And then we have to
think creatively about how would you burst capacity because you
don't need to burst it all the time, they're just
certain days and for a couple hours where you need
to do it. And we also compared it to our
GX data, because we know who our guests are that
fill out our GX surveys and we know what their
experience was at our ticket window or pass office, so
we could correlate the GX data and see how impactful
(19:30):
that was to the experience. And where we landed was
the easiest quickest way to resolve this is to actually
focus on the simplest transactions. So what are the simplest
things that we're doing at these locations, and could we
create a mobile solution that you could do that same
transaction with a mobile device, which would give you the
ability to burst your capacity and do it in a
(19:52):
way that's so simple for our employees to understand. You
could actually have employees from other departments come over work
a one to two hour shift and take a ton
of relief and reduce the wait times for everybody, right.
And what we landed on was we have a ton
of people that buy lift tickets in advance, and what
we're really doing in those transactions is just looking up
an order and loading it to an RFID card and
(20:13):
sending them on their way. And we were able to
very quickly design a solution where you could use a
credit card or a phone number to find an order,
verify it with the guests, and quickly load their tickets
or passes on to that hard card and get them
on the slopes. And it was so simple to use.
It took ten minutes of training for employees to come
over and work those shifts, but it had a massive
(20:35):
impact on the ticket windows as well. The GX score
results that we saw across all of our resorts was
amazing year over year of just that simple impact, and
back to the integrated network. The nice thing was we
were able to deploy it everywhere and each resort could
tailor it based on what they needed to do for
their guests. So that was just a really interesting one
where I think we probably started out with some ideas,
(20:55):
we knew a very specific business problem we were trying
to solve, and we let data sort of guide us
to what the actual best resolution would be for that
next season. So that one felt like a great example
of sort of an engineering approach to thinking about a
problem and getting to the right solution.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I love that that solution is one that has multiple impacts.
I mean, obviously it impacts customer satisfaction, but it also
impacts employee satisfaction and morale. I think it's a huge
benefit both for the customer who's visiting and for the
people who are working there. And often that last part
gets left out of conversations when we're looking at this
(21:32):
because we're thinking of it in the terms of someone
who's a consumer as opposed to someone who's working behind
those lines.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, and two additional points on that. I think you
mentioned the employee experience, which is something we're very focused on.
I think the thing that was surprising to me was
how thrilled the people from other departments were to be
able to help out, and it was a simple enough
training experience for them, and the guests were super surprised,
delighted that it was such a simple, fast transaction for them,
(22:00):
actually a great experience that they could help out a
fellow group. Our entire company is so focused on the
guest experience, so anything that we can do to improve
that's great. And then the sort of surprise and delight
of the guest was just a very rewarding experience as
they went through it. And then the second point is
this is kind of the impetus for us introducing mobile
pass and mobile lift ticket and kind of going back
(22:20):
to using your mobile phone. That is one of the
things our guests need to do right now is get
a physical piece of media and RFID card for a
passer lift ticket. And this next season we're introducing a
mobile capability that you do it all on your phone
and that eliminates that step that you don't actually even
need to go get a piece of media if you
don't want to.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I'm curious about your perspective about what sort of approach
does it take in order to secure buy in from
other leaders when you are looking at solutions to business
challenges on a tech level.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I think there are a few things that we've really
focused on. I think one is just our organizational model
that I think is a little bit unique. I'm not
sure all IT departments are structured this way, but my
leaders on my team are actually fully embedded leaders on
the business groups that their senior leadership teams that they support.
So my finance director sits on the finance SLT, my
(23:12):
marketing technology vice president sits on the marketing SLT, and
we have this orientation and one of our mantras that
we use in it. And this a big part of our
culture is we're business leaders first, so we're going to
focus on partnering with our different business functions to determine
what business goals are we trying to drive, what outcomes
are we trying to drive, and then we can think
(23:32):
about how technology enables it. So I think how you
get that buy in is to make sure you understand
the business strategy and the business outcomes first before you
just go run off and start implementing technology. Because then
we're aligned on what our success criteria is and how
we're going to measure it. For me and my role, again,
this is like the best part of my job is
I get to work with all my ecpers on all
(23:53):
their different strategic initiatives, and that relationship and that partnership
that starts with trust and credibility and ownership and accountability
is super important and we spend a lot of time
on that. Then the last thing I would say that
is critical is early in my career when I thought
about technology innovation, we were just focused on the technology
development and deployment, and we would deploy the technology and
(24:16):
whatever happened happened, But we felt good about ourselves because
we deployed the technology and that doesn't work. So now
we take a totally different approach. We take a very
cross functional approach. That are more programs that we're working on,
but they include marketing, HR, finance, operations, guest services, IT
and we all work together as one team to take
(24:39):
full ownership and accountability of holistically what we're trying to accomplish.
So I think some of those cultural things that we've
built in and structural things that we've built in, getting
buy in is not really a topic or an issue
because we're partnering from the very beginning on what we're
trying to accomplish, and then we have joint ownership and
accountability all the way through implementation.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Tim, you've hit on stuff that I'm very passionate about
because to me, that underlying core of communication is absolutely
key to a successful enterprise. Well, we're getting toward the
end of our conversation here. I am curious, are there
any technologies that you're looking forward to implementing at Veil Resorts.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
The most exciting transformational thing that I think we're doing
is related to my epic Gear. It's a big transformational
rental program and it's also going to be built into
the mobile app, so you can do everything within that app.
But we really pushed ourselves on this one, which was
not to take our existing business and make it a
little bit better, try to like really step back and
think about what would a totally different experience be, and
(25:39):
then how can we facilitate that with technology. And this
is an amazing assortment of the best brands of skis
and snowboards, guaranteed for the season if that's what you want,
or you can try different ones every single day, free delivery,
slope side pickup, so drop off and pickup to where
you don't have to bring your skis on the airplane,
or you don't have to lug them through the village
(26:00):
from your hotel. So like, over all, these different things
are going to create something that's just a totally different
experience for both an owner and a current renter. And
so I'm really excited to see how that's going to
evolve and how technology is going to enable it. We're
doing a pilot this year at four of our Colorado resorts.
When we do innovation with technology, we do a lot
of employee pilots and proofs of concept because we have
(26:20):
so many employees on the mountain and they want to
be a part of it, and they want to give
feedback as part of the experience, and we'll use our
employees to refine it before we're ready to deploy it
to guests. This one's so interesting and compelling. We're doing
a guest pilot, so we're actually going to bring guests
into the pilot process over this next season and get
real guest feedback before we do a full deployment next season.
(26:41):
So that, to me is really exciting and new for us.
I think this level of sort of visibility and transparency
with guests going through this experience and us trying to
learn from them so that we can make it even
better for the following season.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Before I could let Tim go, I had to ask
him one more thing. What is the best piece of
advice you've ever received?
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah? I've shared this one a lot actually with people
both internally and externally, because it's something I still work
on every day. But it ties into this culture and
sort of business leaders first mentality that I talked about.
I've been with a company for about twenty two years,
in the ciole for about five and when I was
promoted into this role. Our CEO at the time told me,
(27:29):
think about your role on the executive committee and imagine
an external observer came in and sat in the meeting
and at the end of the meeting they walked out
and they couldn't tell that you were the CIO, and
the message there was the expectation for you as an
executive of this company is to help lead the company,
not be a functional expert. So of course you have
(27:51):
to lead technology and lead the technology team, but your
role needs to be thinking about the business and helping
to drive the business, which means you need to engage
in all kinds of topics and things that maybe are
outside of your primary domain expertise. And I think about
that regularly and I think it's something that I'm always
working on. Am I living up to that standard? And
(28:13):
would somebody actually walk out and be like, well, clearly
that was the CIO because he was fully engaged in
the technology conversations but wasn't contributing in other areas. And
I think that applies to my leaders, and I talked
about them sitting on business leadership teams too. If somebody
watched you and walked out, would they know that you
were the technology person, or would they just see you
are a strong leader, fully engaged in the conversations in
the room.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Excellent answer. Well, Tim, I have to tell you this
Georgia boy who's never strapped a pair of skis on
in his life, has already said they're daydreaming about a
ski vacation. So maybe someday you're going to see me,
probably face down on the slopes, but on the slopes,
and if you do, you'll wave. I might not see,
depending on how face deep I am in the snow,
but I'm going to be enjoying myself.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, well let me know for sure. We'll get you
set up.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
That sounds amazing. Thank you for joining the show. I
greatly appreciate this has been a great conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Thanks for the time. I really appreciate it. Look forward
to talking again sometime.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Thanks again to Tim April of Veil Resorts for joining
the show. I loved having him on to talk about
how Veil Resorts is leveraging technology in innovative and practical
ways to improve guest experiences. It's very easy for me
to see the value of those initiatives from a consumer perspective,
but beyond that. I think Tim's approach to leadership is
(29:31):
really inspirational. Valuing each department at Veil Resorts and working
with them to identify and then pursue goals that benefit
the business overall is something that's clearly valuable on the surface,
but often it's extremely difficult to actually pull off, considering
the breadth of Veil Resorts and the number and nature
of different properties. I imagine creating that culture and nurturing
(29:55):
it is something that will always require work, but the
benefits are undeniable. I'm also eager to learn more about
the program's Veil Resorts will debut this coming season. I
think it's such a clever approach to take advantage of
smartphone technology, and I'm excited to hear about how the
rollout progresses. I really hope one day to try it
out for myself. I just need to learn how to
(30:17):
ski first. Thanks again to Tim, and thank you for
listening to the Restless Ones. Don't forget we have a
great catalog of interviews with tech leaders across all sectors
of business that you can explore, and be sure to
check out future episodes where we'll have more conversations with
leaders at the intersection of tech and business. Until next time,
(30:40):
I'm Jonathan Strickland.
Hey everyone, Welcome to the Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
As always, my focus is on exploring the intersection of
technology and business by having conversations with the most forward
thinking leaders. Throughout my career, I've covered everything from massive
parallel processing to advanced robotics, but what truly inspires me
(00:24):
are the stories of innovation and transformation Today. Our guest
is Tim April, executive vice president and Chief Information Officer
of Veil Resorts. Tim has spent more than two decades
working with Veil Resorts, starting with running a PeopleSoft implementation
and now serving as CIO of the entire company. Veil
(00:47):
Resorts is a world leader in luxury destination based travel,
and while cutting edge technology might not be front of
mind when you're skiing down a mountain, it absolutely is
a fundamental part of the strategy. From creating a helpful,
informative and interactive guest experience designed to make your stay
a memorable one, to using data to improve operations across
(01:10):
multiple resort properties, Vail Resorts leverages tech in general and
connectivity in particular to great effect. The company and its
subsidiaries operate numerous resorts, which presents an interesting challenge when
it comes to rolling out new initiatives across different company properties.
But Tim loves a challenge. Before I dive into some
(01:31):
fresh powder, I mean Tim's experience as CIO, I wanted
to get to know him a bit more. Tim, Welcome
to the Restless Ones. I'm really jazzed to have you
on the show. I'm excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, thanks for having me. Super excited to have this
conversation with you today and looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, me too. And I always like to get started
on this show getting to know a little bit more
about my guest. I'm curious is how did you first
get interested in technology?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So just a quick background for me, I grew up
in Saint Louis, Missouri, pretty big family, but I would
say not on the forefront of technology as far as
how I was growing up, and so I would say
pre college a little bit of an insecurity for me
that I felt like other people were probably further along
than I was. That transition for me was I went
to Notre Dame and was trying to figure out a degree,
(02:27):
and I was really good at math, kind of like science.
So I went into engineering and that was really driven
by the fact that I just like solving problems. That
is something that's interesting to me, and that's really what
engineering is all about. I picked chemical engineering not really
knowing what jobs would be in chemical engineering, but it
just sounded like an interesting degree and kind of fit
(02:47):
this challenge, something new to me, hard to do, but
really complex problems to like breakdown and solve. As I
went through my undergraduate degree, I started realizing if I
wanted to do like big innovative things in chemical engineering,
that would really require getting a PhD to get that
kind of flexibility and latitude. And what worked out for
(03:07):
me was Anderson Consulting was the world's largest technology consulting
company at the time, and they had a huge office
in Chicago, which is only a couple hours drive from
Notre Dame. And what they love to do is hire
engineers and then they would train them on whatever the
consulting gig was that they needed to do. And that
was a perfect transition for me. So I was able
(03:27):
to use my engineering degree and go work for a
big consulting company not really even knowing what I was
going to be focused on, and funny enough, they threw
me right into technology consulting in my first role, and
that really got me on this journey that I've been
on for quite some time now.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Wow, it's funny because our backgrounds have a lot of
parallels in them. I grew up in rural Georgia and
was interested in technology, but the resources weren't really there
for me to dive into it, certainly not when I
was going to school. And I also worked for a
consulting firm. It's just funny to hear those little steps
because I kind of have an inkling into your experience
(04:05):
and I love speaking with engineers. So can you talk
a bit about coming to Veil Resorts and how your
career there got started and sort of your journey throughout
the organization.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah. So the transition for me out of consulting to
being in a ski resort town was an interesting one.
We were on vacation over New Year's Even nineteen ninety
nine actually, and my brother and I decided while we
were on vacation that we could work for ourselves and
buy a three bedroom condo, turn our third bedroom into
an office, and we could ski as much as we
(04:37):
wanted and just figure out how to make a living
in the ski resort. So I literally flew back to Boston,
quit my consulting job, and drove from Boston to Breckenridge
and started living in Breckenridge, Colorado, and I wanted to
get really involved in the local community there, so I
did all kinds of things that I never would have
guessed that I would do. I tutored for competitive high
(04:58):
school ski racers for Team Summit. Jeffrey Lyons was the
host of a pretty big film festival, the Breckenridge Festival
Film at the time. I got really involved in that.
I think I read one hundred and fifty screenplays in
about eight weeks everyone that got submitted, and then helped
the judges pick the winners. So I was doing all
kinds of things, which is what you do when you
live in these resort communities. But there was a disconnect
(05:20):
because I had no affiliation with the resort. So I
actually went up to the HR office at the resort,
which was like half a mile from my condo, took
up my resume, and ironically Fail Resorts was doing a
PeopleSoft implementation and they needed the exact expertise that I
had done at Anderson Consulting and knew how to help
them wow.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Well, first of all, Tim, I have to say, the
description of your career decision there I think more than
merits your inclusion in the restless ones. I don't think
I've heard a more restless description in all the episodes
that I have hosted so far. So clearly you did
end up saying with Veil Resorts, you ended up being
(06:02):
an integral part of that team. And I'm curious if
you are at like a party and someone says, so,
what do you do for a living, how do you
actually describe your job in a way that makes sense
to them.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
There are two parts of that answer. One is everybody
loves to talk about fail Resorts and their experiences as
gears or snowboarders and want to share all the great
things that they did and any feedback that they might have.
So it's always a lot of fun actually to talk
about my job because people are so interested and they
want to engage, and they really want to share the
(06:34):
experiences that they've had at our resort. On the it side,
I think it's always interesting. It's kind of surprising me,
but I still get a lot of conversations that view
it as sort of an order taker back office type
of function, and it couldn't be further from the truth. Nowadays,
pretty much any business strategy that's being implemented, whether it's
(06:54):
a corporate function or an operational line of business, has
a technology foundation underneath that is critical to actually achieving
the business outcomes that those groups are trying to achieve.
So the interesting part about my job and my team's
job is we get to work on everything. We get
to work with every function, every operation, and we get
to be a part of developing the strategy and implementing
(07:17):
the strategy, both on the technology enablement side, and it's
full partnership and what we're trying to do. So yeah,
I still think there's a misconception out there that I
get a lot as far as what it actually does
versus what the modern sort of role is of an
IT organization.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, I think the issue I encounter is that most
people's experience with it is when they have to put
in a ticket because something has gone wrong with whatever
system they're working on, and so they start to view
it as being reactive and don't realize how proactive it is.
I think that's a great way to kind of segue
into talking about technology over at Veil Resorts. On this show, obviously,
(07:54):
we love to talk about connectivity, and I was fascinated
to start reading about some of the connectivity the based
features at Veil Resorts. Can you talk a bit about
how that connectivity feature ends up providing opportunities to delight visitors.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, I think it starts with a few things. For us,
As you probably have seen, we grew through acquisition of
a lot of resorts over a relatively short period of time.
I think one of the most important decisions we made
early on for the North American resorts was to do
full integrations. So once we acquired a resort, we put
them on all of our systems and processes as quickly
as we could without being disruptive. And that puts us
(08:31):
in a position now where when we deploy something new
or drive and innovation, everybody gets the benefit of it,
and all of our integrated resorts, which is really powerful.
Ski resorts are complex trips to plan and there's just
a lot that goes into it. Takes a lot of
time and effort. For us, we're always trying to help
our guests do as much in advance as they possibly can,
(08:52):
you know, select their pass or lift ticket, book their rentals,
book their ski school, think about the F and B
experiences that they want to have. So the more that
we can get them to do before they show up
at the resort, the better experience that they're going to
have in resort. However, once they get in resort, there's
still a lot of complexity. It could be on mountain
weather conditions, it could be what got groomed that night,
it could be what trails are open. There are all
(09:13):
kinds of real time pieces of information that are going
to help the guest. And if they also didn't do
some things in advance, now they're in a situation where
they have to do transactional things in the resort that
maybe takes longer for them to actually get on the mountain,
which is what the experiences that they came for. So
for us, the transition to mobile and thinking about the
role mobile can play is really once that guest leaves
(09:35):
their hotel room, our ability to interact with them and
communicate with them is on their mobile device, and that's
how we need to make sure that we're getting them
all the information they need to have the best experience
they possibly can and then figure out even if they're
making those decisions kind of late in the process. How
can they self serve or get support through their mobile
device as quickly as possible to remove any friction points
(09:57):
in their experience. And the Integrated Network of Resorts allows
us to deploy that everywhere across North America, all at once,
which is great.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, I think it's brilliant. On the backside, where we've
got all these different data points coming in, I'm curious
how is Veil Resorts taking advantage of that technology on
that side.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, we've been on this journey of being a data
driven company for a long time and I think that
is also back to the integrated Network of Resorts is
super powerful because we can get input and data from
all the different experiences that our guests are having because
they don't just go to one resort, they go to
multiple resorts. So for us to be able to aggregate
that data, it does a couple things. One, it gives
us more insight into our guest preferences and what works
(10:40):
for them to allow us to communicate with them in
a more personalized way that's relevant to them. So that's
incredibly powerful. On the operational side, though, we spend a
lot of time on how do we make our operations
more efficient? And what this has allowed us to do
is we now have enough resorts that we can aggregate
data but then also build benchmarking us how one resort's
(11:01):
doing something versus how another resort's doing something, all within
our company. I would say early on in the company's history,
there was still a little bit of competitiveness between resorts.
They were competing for guests, and we worked really hard
to get past that, and now we have a culture
that's focused on sharing best practices and building benchmarks. Building
KPIs learning from each other, and that spans across every
(11:22):
operation we have. That could be snowmaking, it could be grooming,
it could be working through the parking and arrival process
when guests are showing up our resort, what's the most
efficient way to actually manage that flow of traffic. So
they are all these different opportunities, but I think the
power has been the combination of the data and then
being able to share that across the resorts to learn
what's the optimal way or best way to do something.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
To me the ability to collect and analyze data at
the scale that we're capable of now. When I first
started talking about big data, you couldn't really analyze all
that information. It's a totally different world now where we're
able to analyze data at scale and start drawing conclusions
are more rapidly than I could have envisioned ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, and one of the challenges of the business that
we're in is our primary revenue generating season is about
a four month period in the winter. So to your
point on the ability to aggregate data, analyze it quickly,
drive insights, implement them. We're not a typical company that
just has quarter after quarter to make improvements. We have
a very small operating window, so it is really important
(12:26):
that we can learn quickly and implement changes and iterate,
be like very agile in our thinking throughout our winter season.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
We talk a lot about high speed connectivity on this show,
where we talk about things like five G implementation or
Wi Fi six, this ability to have high through put,
low latency connections. I'm curious is Veil Resorts exploring that
and if so, in what sort of implementations.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah. If you think about our operating footprint, we're also
unique in that we have some resorts that are absolutely massive.
I mean some of our biggest resorts. You're talking about
thousands and thousands of acres without a ton of infrastructure
in it. So the entire twenty plus years that I've
been here, we've been talking about cellular coverage, getting our
network actually out to remote locations where we can use
(13:21):
Wi Fi as a benefit. So we are literally every
single year analyzing cellular coverage and advancements in cellular and
working with all the major providers and other partners so
that we can extend as much coverage as we can
to all the skiable train at all of our resorts.
So that's an ongoing process and ongoing investment because it
just enhances the experience. We look for Wi Fi and
(13:42):
areas where maybe there's a benefit to doing that, which
may be a base area or something where people are
doing things on their phone that may require connectivity. And
then I think the other part for us that's really
important is when we think about mobile app design, we
have to think about the fact that you may not
have great coverage everywhere you are on the mountain on
some of our really big mountains, and so we have
to consider that in app design. So what can you
(14:05):
do offline versus what do you need connectivity to do
and so we really do emphasize and focus on downloading
the app, downloading the critical pieces of data that you need.
So it's our goal to get as much connectivity as
we can across the board and as much bandwidth as
we possibly can for our guests, and also design around
the fact that we're going to have gaps.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
And also on the behind the scene side, I imagine
that there's a lot of value in being able to
collect those different data points about things like mountain conditions
so that you can proactively make those decisions that will
have the minimum impact on guest experience. And that's where
I start seeing really interesting possibilities. Whether you're talking about
Internet of Things implementations or you're talking about a simple
(14:47):
camera setup that is by located with like a cell tower,
these are things that come to mind when I start
thinking about ways of integrating this connective technology.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, so I think part of that is our network
extended throughout our resorts so that we can actually be
connected to the things that you're talking about, like webcams, snowcams,
like the snowmaking system or the grooming system, things like that.
So that's a big part of it. The first challenge
is how do we get the data and have the
real time information? The second is how do we communicate
that effectively in a real time manner to our guests
(15:19):
in a way that works for them. And that's where
our big focus is on the new mobile app that
we're developing is really having our guests understand there's one
place to go. And then the data on guest preferences
is important as well, because there's a ton of information,
a ton of real time data. So how do we
provide something that's relevant to you, that you care about
and is real time? How do we know that about
(15:40):
you versus all the information that we could be sending
out to all of our guests.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, Tim, you made an excellent point. Access to information
is one thing. How do you communicate it effectively is,
as we all know, a huge challenge. So that to
me is really exciting because having the experience of feeling
like your visit has has been tailor made to you,
there's no way to put a value on that. So
I think that that's one of those things that this
(16:06):
technology can really enable to that end. I'm also curious
I read a little bit about the AI assistant Emma
can you talk a bit more about that and what
Emma's role is in all of this.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, you know it fits actually in the conversation we
were just having. We have a lot of folks in
our base areas that are walking and on mountain that
are answering guest questions all the time. Right It's like
where do I drop my kids off at ski school?
What's groomed today? Where should I go skiing? All of
those types of things. So, right now, it's more of
a human interface once the guests are in resort, and
so the idea is, well, how do we use that
(16:39):
mobile device, that smartphone to allow the guests to self serve,
which in many cases they want to do, and if
they need to contact an agent, that we make it
really really simple for them to get in touch with
somebody that has those answers. Emma was also an early
adoption of sort of natural language processing machine learning AI capabilities,
and we used a text based interface to do it
(17:00):
because we felt that the guests could be comfortable just
reaching out via text, not having to worry about an app,
and we could answer their questions for them. So we
learned a ton through that experience, both on how the
technology works and what kinds of questions our guests were
asking and how we could service them going forward. The
plan going forward within the my Apic app is back
to the same thing, not sending our guests multiple places,
(17:22):
but saying, Okay, if you want that information, we have
a mobile app for you that has all of these
different features and communication methods and a support feature. So
I think a little bit more of an integrated approach
that ties into this mobile strategy of one place to
go for our guests.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Wow, fascinating. I'm curious also if you can maybe tell
us a story. I realized that real life stories don't
typically have the neat beginning, middle, and end, but perhaps
kind of walk us through a project as an engineer
that goes from perhaps the earliest stages of ideation into
the planning and development all the way to implementation and
(17:58):
what that looks like at resorts.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yeah, again, back on the innovation side. One of the
areas that we're always looking at our where friction points
in the guest experience or where are there lines that
people have to wait into and what can we do
to mitigate that. One of the projects that I think
fits into this category of kind of ideation to resolution.
That was interesting because I wouldn't have predicted the outcome
when we started it. The problem statement was for some
(18:23):
of our peak days and peak times, we can have
line weights that people don't want to wait in at
our ticket windows or pass offices. And one of the
constraints that we have that are similar to other ski
resorts is they're physical building constraints. So you have a
capacity limit on how many point of sales can you
have open, how many people can you have working at
that specific base area. And so we said, okay, well
(18:44):
that's an interesting problem to solve because we're probably not
going to build more buildings by next season. So in
the absence of that, what can we do? And so
we use data. So what we did is we said,
we're going to analyze all the data and all the transactions.
We're going to look at how the wait times vary
across different locations and resorts. We're going to understand the
different transaction types that occur, and which ones are complex
(19:08):
and which ones are simple. And then we have to
think creatively about how would you burst capacity because you
don't need to burst it all the time, they're just
certain days and for a couple hours where you need
to do it. And we also compared it to our
GX data, because we know who our guests are that
fill out our GX surveys and we know what their
experience was at our ticket window or pass office, so
we could correlate the GX data and see how impactful
(19:30):
that was to the experience. And where we landed was
the easiest quickest way to resolve this is to actually
focus on the simplest transactions. So what are the simplest
things that we're doing at these locations, and could we
create a mobile solution that you could do that same
transaction with a mobile device, which would give you the
ability to burst your capacity and do it in a
(19:52):
way that's so simple for our employees to understand. You
could actually have employees from other departments come over work
a one to two hour shift and take a ton
of relief and reduce the wait times for everybody, right.
And what we landed on was we have a ton
of people that buy lift tickets in advance, and what
we're really doing in those transactions is just looking up
an order and loading it to an RFID card and
(20:13):
sending them on their way. And we were able to
very quickly design a solution where you could use a
credit card or a phone number to find an order,
verify it with the guests, and quickly load their tickets
or passes on to that hard card and get them
on the slopes. And it was so simple to use.
It took ten minutes of training for employees to come
over and work those shifts, but it had a massive
(20:35):
impact on the ticket windows as well. The GX score
results that we saw across all of our resorts was
amazing year over year of just that simple impact, and
back to the integrated network. The nice thing was we
were able to deploy it everywhere and each resort could
tailor it based on what they needed to do for
their guests. So that was just a really interesting one
where I think we probably started out with some ideas,
(20:55):
we knew a very specific business problem we were trying
to solve, and we let data sort of guide us
to what the actual best resolution would be for that
next season. So that one felt like a great example
of sort of an engineering approach to thinking about a
problem and getting to the right solution.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I love that that solution is one that has multiple impacts.
I mean, obviously it impacts customer satisfaction, but it also
impacts employee satisfaction and morale. I think it's a huge
benefit both for the customer who's visiting and for the
people who are working there. And often that last part
gets left out of conversations when we're looking at this
(21:32):
because we're thinking of it in the terms of someone
who's a consumer as opposed to someone who's working behind
those lines.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, and two additional points on that. I think you
mentioned the employee experience, which is something we're very focused on.
I think the thing that was surprising to me was
how thrilled the people from other departments were to be
able to help out, and it was a simple enough
training experience for them, and the guests were super surprised,
delighted that it was such a simple, fast transaction for them,
(22:00):
actually a great experience that they could help out a
fellow group. Our entire company is so focused on the
guest experience, so anything that we can do to improve
that's great. And then the sort of surprise and delight
of the guest was just a very rewarding experience as
they went through it. And then the second point is
this is kind of the impetus for us introducing mobile
pass and mobile lift ticket and kind of going back
(22:20):
to using your mobile phone. That is one of the
things our guests need to do right now is get
a physical piece of media and RFID card for a
passer lift ticket. And this next season we're introducing a
mobile capability that you do it all on your phone
and that eliminates that step that you don't actually even
need to go get a piece of media if you
don't want to.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I'm curious about your perspective about what sort of approach
does it take in order to secure buy in from
other leaders when you are looking at solutions to business
challenges on a tech level.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I think there are a few things that we've really
focused on. I think one is just our organizational model
that I think is a little bit unique. I'm not
sure all IT departments are structured this way, but my
leaders on my team are actually fully embedded leaders on
the business groups that their senior leadership teams that they support.
So my finance director sits on the finance SLT, my
(23:12):
marketing technology vice president sits on the marketing SLT, and
we have this orientation and one of our mantras that
we use in it. And this a big part of our
culture is we're business leaders first, so we're going to
focus on partnering with our different business functions to determine
what business goals are we trying to drive, what outcomes
are we trying to drive, and then we can think
(23:32):
about how technology enables it. So I think how you
get that buy in is to make sure you understand
the business strategy and the business outcomes first before you
just go run off and start implementing technology. Because then
we're aligned on what our success criteria is and how
we're going to measure it. For me and my role, again,
this is like the best part of my job is
I get to work with all my ecpers on all
(23:53):
their different strategic initiatives, and that relationship and that partnership
that starts with trust and credibility and ownership and accountability
is super important and we spend a lot of time
on that. Then the last thing I would say that
is critical is early in my career when I thought
about technology innovation, we were just focused on the technology
development and deployment, and we would deploy the technology and
(24:16):
whatever happened happened, But we felt good about ourselves because
we deployed the technology and that doesn't work. So now
we take a totally different approach. We take a very
cross functional approach. That are more programs that we're working on,
but they include marketing, HR, finance, operations, guest services, IT
and we all work together as one team to take
(24:39):
full ownership and accountability of holistically what we're trying to accomplish.
So I think some of those cultural things that we've
built in and structural things that we've built in, getting
buy in is not really a topic or an issue
because we're partnering from the very beginning on what we're
trying to accomplish, and then we have joint ownership and
accountability all the way through implementation.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Tim, you've hit on stuff that I'm very passionate about
because to me, that underlying core of communication is absolutely
key to a successful enterprise. Well, we're getting toward the
end of our conversation here. I am curious, are there
any technologies that you're looking forward to implementing at Veil Resorts.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
The most exciting transformational thing that I think we're doing
is related to my epic Gear. It's a big transformational
rental program and it's also going to be built into
the mobile app, so you can do everything within that app.
But we really pushed ourselves on this one, which was
not to take our existing business and make it a
little bit better, try to like really step back and
think about what would a totally different experience be, and
(25:39):
then how can we facilitate that with technology. And this
is an amazing assortment of the best brands of skis
and snowboards, guaranteed for the season if that's what you want,
or you can try different ones every single day, free delivery,
slope side pickup, so drop off and pickup to where
you don't have to bring your skis on the airplane,
or you don't have to lug them through the village
(26:00):
from your hotel. So like, over all, these different things
are going to create something that's just a totally different
experience for both an owner and a current renter. And
so I'm really excited to see how that's going to
evolve and how technology is going to enable it. We're
doing a pilot this year at four of our Colorado resorts.
When we do innovation with technology, we do a lot
of employee pilots and proofs of concept because we have
(26:20):
so many employees on the mountain and they want to
be a part of it, and they want to give
feedback as part of the experience, and we'll use our
employees to refine it before we're ready to deploy it
to guests. This one's so interesting and compelling. We're doing
a guest pilot, so we're actually going to bring guests
into the pilot process over this next season and get
real guest feedback before we do a full deployment next season.
(26:41):
So that, to me is really exciting and new for us.
I think this level of sort of visibility and transparency
with guests going through this experience and us trying to
learn from them so that we can make it even
better for the following season.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Before I could let Tim go, I had to ask
him one more thing. What is the best piece of
advice you've ever received?
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah? I've shared this one a lot actually with people
both internally and externally, because it's something I still work
on every day. But it ties into this culture and
sort of business leaders first mentality that I talked about.
I've been with a company for about twenty two years,
in the ciole for about five and when I was
promoted into this role. Our CEO at the time told me,
(27:29):
think about your role on the executive committee and imagine
an external observer came in and sat in the meeting
and at the end of the meeting they walked out
and they couldn't tell that you were the CIO, and
the message there was the expectation for you as an
executive of this company is to help lead the company,
not be a functional expert. So of course you have
(27:51):
to lead technology and lead the technology team, but your
role needs to be thinking about the business and helping
to drive the business, which means you need to engage
in all kinds of topics and things that maybe are
outside of your primary domain expertise. And I think about
that regularly and I think it's something that I'm always
working on. Am I living up to that standard? And
(28:13):
would somebody actually walk out and be like, well, clearly
that was the CIO because he was fully engaged in
the technology conversations but wasn't contributing in other areas. And
I think that applies to my leaders, and I talked
about them sitting on business leadership teams too. If somebody
watched you and walked out, would they know that you
were the technology person, or would they just see you
are a strong leader, fully engaged in the conversations in
the room.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Excellent answer. Well, Tim, I have to tell you this
Georgia boy who's never strapped a pair of skis on
in his life, has already said they're daydreaming about a
ski vacation. So maybe someday you're going to see me,
probably face down on the slopes, but on the slopes,
and if you do, you'll wave. I might not see,
depending on how face deep I am in the snow,
but I'm going to be enjoying myself.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, well let me know for sure. We'll get you
set up.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
That sounds amazing. Thank you for joining the show. I
greatly appreciate this has been a great conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Thanks for the time. I really appreciate it. Look forward
to talking again sometime.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Thanks again to Tim April of Veil Resorts for joining
the show. I loved having him on to talk about
how Veil Resorts is leveraging technology in innovative and practical
ways to improve guest experiences. It's very easy for me
to see the value of those initiatives from a consumer perspective,
but beyond that. I think Tim's approach to leadership is
(29:31):
really inspirational. Valuing each department at Veil Resorts and working
with them to identify and then pursue goals that benefit
the business overall is something that's clearly valuable on the surface,
but often it's extremely difficult to actually pull off, considering
the breadth of Veil Resorts and the number and nature
of different properties. I imagine creating that culture and nurturing
(29:55):
it is something that will always require work, but the
benefits are undeniable. I'm also eager to learn more about
the program's Veil Resorts will debut this coming season. I
think it's such a clever approach to take advantage of
smartphone technology, and I'm excited to hear about how the
rollout progresses. I really hope one day to try it
out for myself. I just need to learn how to
(30:17):
ski first. Thanks again to Tim, and thank you for
listening to the Restless Ones. Don't forget we have a
great catalog of interviews with tech leaders across all sectors
of business that you can explore, and be sure to
check out future episodes where we'll have more conversations with
leaders at the intersection of tech and business. Until next time,
(30:40):
I'm Jonathan Strickland.
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