 Poster: A snowHead
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So this just popped up on my instagram:
https://card.snowpass.com/
The SNOWPASS CARD will be for sale at the end of this Season, to make sure that you don’t miss out the launch campaign click ”here” to book your SNOWPASS CARD for the 2019/2020 season.
You just need to give us your e-mail address and we will inform you 1 week before the sales start and the best of all it is without any commitment.
But please be fast! There will be only 50.000 SNOWPASS CARD sold at this awesome price of 395€!
Has anyone else heard of this/seen it - suspecting scam or some over optimistic marketing/strategy
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Sounds great.....
.....sounds too cheap. IMHO natch.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Either
1. Run it up the flag pole and see if it flies
2. Email collection strategy for a different company in the same field - snowsports industry.
If there's no uptake, then they have the email addresses and will spam them with alternative 'offers'
If it's as good as they're making out, I'll wait to see which mountains are included and then make a decision.
At 895 euros it should still be a steal if you get 20-30 days in Europe per season. Especially if Swiss resorts are inlvoved.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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If it looks too good to be true....
Its probably a scam
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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There was a really good piece on Bloomberg Businessweek over the weekend about the Epic and Ikon passes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-01/epic-vs-ikon-battle-for-the-best-ski-pass
| Quote: |
| By getting skiers to buy early, the company locked in a mass of customers and raked in a pile of revenue during its slowest months. Its season-pass revenue increased 22 percent in the first year, from roughly $78 million to about $94 million. |
There are huge advantages for ski resorts to get revenue upfront before the season - How the snowpass version would distribute this out and limit you to select days in certain resorts or be unlimited is yet to be seen but would be interesting. And if they are going to distribute revenue prorated by where skiers show up in a season, can see even less reason why a resort would sign up.
Would be good to understand how some of the bigger areas that have multi resort ski passes currently work like the Mont Blanc Multipass or the SuperSki Card in Austria
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Looks like an interesting idea, but...
1. they have yet to announce the list of resorts who have committed to it, so to me that says they have zero so far. I suspect their plan with the early rate is to get a list of how many potential customers they could provide to the resorts, and then use this to get the resorts to sign up. They may be able to get a discount for bringing in 50000 people, but I suspect they'll be taking a loss on those first 50000 tickets as no resort is going to provide a 50% discount to a new startup. It's a chicken and egg scenario - until they have resorts committed, no-one will buy it, but no resorts will commit until they can see the size of the customer base
2. their small print says no more than 10 days per resort or group of resorts (FAQ/When can I use) - to me that says that e.g. the Ski Amadé area is likely to be limited to 10 days in total, rather than 10 days in Flachau, then 10 days in Gastein, then 10 in Schladming, etc. For someone who has enough trips to make it worthwhile to buy a season pass, it is only attractive if all of those trips are to different areas.
@extremerob, my understanding is that the income from an area pass is split between the participating lift companies based on lift usage data, so for example if I buy a Salzburg Superski pass for €264 for 6 days and then ski 4 days in Saalbach, one day at Maria Alm and one day in Zell, Saalbach gets 66% of the income and Maria Alm and Zell get 16.66% each. Of course the larger areas may be in a position to demand a slightly larger share of the cut, and there will be overheads in administering the scheme, but none of the smaller areas would sign up if they weren't getting a reasonable amount, and the larger areas would be unlikely to sign up if they were losing out too much.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I was wondereing earlier this season why someone hasn't tried to do this before?
Having a lot of money upfront is in itself very useful and I suspect that massive cooperation will be beneficial to large and small resorts alike.
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It's very limited in information on that website. Very very basic. If it's not a scam then it's someone chancing their arm that they get enough sign ups to go and try and negotiate with resorts to make it happen. Fyre Festival springs to mind?
The * on the front page "Ski everywhere all season*" but nowhere below does it say what the * means.
Edit - actually in the FAQ page: "As a SNOWPASS CARD holder you are free to ski at any time* in all the partner ski resorts during the 2019/2020 ski season (between 01/11/2019 and 25/04/2020).
*There is only a limit of 10 used days in each ski resort / goup of ski resorts. So for sure you will visit and get to know lots of new places!"
Their "main" website seems to acting as a ticket re-seller for smaller resorts : https://snowpass.com/
According to their T&Cs page they're based in Portugal.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Quote: |
Their "main" website seems to acting as a ticket re-seller
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So it would seem. In the terms of use:
"Snowpass is not a ski resort and is not responsible for providing or setting and controlling the prices applicable to any of the options for buying skipasses/forfaits that you can search for, find and / or reserve through the Snowpass Services or the Snowpass Platforms. All these services are provided by third parties and are covered by the terms and conditions stipulated by these third parties."
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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From their T&C's
Cancellation
Snowpass may, in its absolute discretion, immediately terminate any agreement with you under these Terms at any time and upon notice and / or, if you have an access account, canceling your subscription and access to your account. Snowpass may suspend your use of the Snowpass Services and / or the Snowpass Platforms at any time without notice, without any liability to you.
So...they can withdraw your use of this service at anytime and not have to refund anything. Selling 50,000 at 395€ each nets them 19,750,000€. Terminate all with no refund and start to party.
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in the contact us bit they only show an email address; no contact telephone number or physical address
however in their cookie policy they have their chief legal officer physical address as
Snowpass, Lda.,
Rua Quinta dos Medronheiros, 20 ,
2820-486 Charneca da Caparica,
Portugal
Which is a massive office / shop space that also houses one of the offices for the Portuguese defence offices http://www.empordef.pt/empresas/menu_direita_eid.htm
And there is a huge telephone number on the front of the building saying 21 358 32 22 who are a lease management company, so I suspect that Snowpass are hiring a serviced office there.
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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https://card.snowpass.com/terms.php?lang=en makes clear the full name and address of the company as per @Sack the Juggler's post above, and gives a company registration number. The details show that any contract would be subject to Portuguese law.
They have a valid security certificate for the domains, but that means very little. The website is hosted by A2 Hosting in Michigan, and their main domain at https://snowpass.com/ is linked to a Google Cloud system. Their new server has a MySQL service which is open to the Internet, plus POP3 and IMAP services, so they need some lessons in security before I'd send them my credit card details...
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Poster: A snowHead
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the company is owned by these guys; Pedro and Tomas Nieva
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedro-neiva-14529551/
http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company-profile.snowpass.3f300bb3dd89a383.html?aka_re=1#contact-anchor
Pedro also is a general manager of inorm (and possible a shareholder) but it looks like it is (also) owned by a dutch couple
http://inorm.com/en/contact/
and has patents on snowpass and virtual leds
There are five people who work there including the two brothers and two other named parties
Julia Engelmann; business development - but seems to be more of a stand designer for trade shows
Rafał Kasprzak; also business development but more of an IT and french customer liaison chap - has a long list of jobs, most only a few months, longest was 1yr 10 months (as a french customer solutions agent for ebay in Ireland)
Not saying there is anything wrong with the above, but its clearly a start up with lofty (and probably worthwhile) plans who are trying to sell their idea to both customers and resorts, especially as they say on their website: "At the end of this season, we will announce the list of ski resort partners, for the snowpass card 2019/2020."
As others have mentioned they seem to be chancers hoping to strike it rich with an all country pass, but if that fails they will have a huge mailing list to sell to other marketing companies, possible even inorm
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Putting to one side the credibility of this company, I think its a great idea if someone can get it to fly at that price.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You'd think they'd check their spelling, too...
There is only a limit of 10 used days in each ski resort / goup of ski resorts.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Sack the Juggler wrote: |
| As others have mentioned they seem to be chancers hoping to strike it rich with an all country pass, but if that fails they will have a huge mailing list to sell to other marketing companies, possible even inorm |
Oh no they won't, as that's one of the main impacts of GDPR - they can collect email addresses for the express purpose of being notified of their Europe-wide ski pass scheme. They have no consent to use that for any other purpose, as they have not specifically asked for that consent, so if they decided to try to sell that list to other companies they'd discover that no reputable company would touch it for fear of being fined out of existence. They also can't pass it to any other group company, as they do not have permission to do so from those who provided their details.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Hello! I’m CEO of SNOWPASS (So this might sound a little suspicious... )and I will try to explain as much as possible in few words.
The next ski season ( 2019 / 2020 ) will be the first one of Snowpass Card.
Snowpass is a private company that is making partnerships with ski resorts in 8 European countries to launch the Snowpass Card.
We already have contracts with dozens of ski resorts but we will still be working next couple of months to increase that number a lot.
We are a team of people from 8 different countries, working hard to make it possible.
Pre-booking is just that... pre-booking.
The e-mail of pre-booking will only be used for that and nothing else.
We will be updating all information in card.snowpass.com. Right now I am visiting some ski resorts in Pyrenees, but in a couple of days I will be back to this Forum and I will be pleased to give you all the answers.
I leave here a challenge...
Who is the official digital partner of FIS - International Ski Federation?
Try to find the answer at FIS website.
You can either choose to stay frozen, and keep on waiting or to be a real “snowaholic” and start preparing the next ski season right now... It’s up to you!
I’ve worked the last 3 years just preparing the 2019/2020 ski season.
If you like the concept of Snowpass Card please join card.snowpass.com and invite your friends to do the same.
I hope you enjoy this and the next ski season!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Welcome and thanks for your post.
Look forward to hearing more from you.
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@Mike Pow,
I like the fact that - according to the map - I can ski in Cornwall (I'll be doing a lot of that), on Sardinia, and in Northern Ireland.
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I'm not sure who this is aimed at. People who live near ski areas will buy season passes that cover those areas without 10 day restrictions. For example I have the Salzburg Super Pass and ski 40+ days per season at many of the ski areas covered on my pass.
People who own holiday apartments and manage to have enough trips to justify a season pass purchase will do the same without a 10 day restriction.
So the target audience is people who can afford to take several ski trips in a season of less than 10 days in different countries/ski areas. Are there many of those?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| queenie pretty please wrote: |
I'm not sure who this is aimed at. People who live near ski areas will buy season passes that cover those areas without 10 day restrictions. For example I have the Salzburg Super Pass and ski 40+ days per season at many of the ski areas covered on my pass.
People who own holiday apartments and manage to have enough trips to justify a season pass purchase will do the same without a 10 day restriction.
So the target audience is people who can afford to take several ski trips in a season of less than 10 days in different countries/ski areas. Are there many of those? |
An open pass covering multiple resorts would offer a lot of variety & options throughout the season.
2x trips/12 days of skiing you would spend over €400 on lift passes - at least having a sort of open pass gives a lot of flexibility.
It would be a bit of niche product. Good for someone well placed to take advantage of the multiple airlines & destinations for budget airlines & able to travel on a whim or someone who fancies traveling around in a motorhome.
Lots of advantages. However, it will come down to what resorts the company get linked up with. It will certainly need a few anchor resorts.
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@queenie pretty please, let's say you live in the Lausanne/Geneva area. 10 days 4 vallees, 10 days Portes du Soleil, 10 days Chamonix, 10 days Grand Massif. All done in day trips from home. That would be pretty attractive. I bet more than 50,000 would fancy that.
As others have said it all depends which resorts sign up.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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@DJL, that makes sense. It's different in Austria because we already have multiple ski area passes such as the Salzburg Super Card and Tirol Card.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| queenie pretty please wrote: |
I'm not sure who this is aimed at. People who live near ski areas will buy season passes that cover those areas without 10 day restrictions. For example I have the Salzburg Super Pass and ski 40+ days per season at many of the ski areas covered on my pass.
People who own holiday apartments and manage to have enough trips to justify a season pass purchase will do the same without a 10 day restriction.
So the target audience is people who can afford to take several ski trips in a season of less than 10 days in different countries/ski areas. Are there many of those? |
For me it would be awesome. I'm not based in, or near enough to a resort to make a dedicated season pass worth while. But there's a huge number of resorts within 2-3 hours drive. I ski a lot of places just for the day or the weekend (mainly in Switzerland). I also take week long trips within Switzerland, and in France and Austria.
I supsect there's quite a lot of people like me in Switzerland and probably also other large population centres in France, Germany, Austria etc.
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| queenie pretty please wrote: |
So the target audience is people who can afford to take several ski trips in a season of less than 10 days in different countries/ski areas. Are there many of those? |
Well lotsa snowheads meet that spec.
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You know it makes sense.
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OK fair enough I understand now. I forgot that some countries do not already offer multiple area passes.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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With the success of the vail's epic pass I can see this type of passes becoming more popular, I would certainly be interested depending on which resorts sign up. I recently read a article on the business side of the epic season pass, vail's masterplan was 1, own the skier 2, own the hill (in that order).
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Poster: A snowHead
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| DJL wrote: |
@queenie pretty please, let's say you live in the Lausanne/Geneva area. 10 days 4 vallees, 10 days Portes du Soleil, 10 days Chamonix, 10 days Grand Massif. All done in day trips from home. That would be pretty attractive. I bet more than 50,000 would fancy that.
As others have said it all depends which resorts sign up. |
I think you are being a bit optimistic to thing you are going to get Chamonix, Grand Massif, PDS and 4 Vallees in your pass to be honest. You might get la Croisette, Lelex, Les Rousses, Haberes Poches 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@Davidof you are probably rite but 4v, 3v and espacekilly did sign up to the epic pass....
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| WASHOUT wrote: |
| @Davidof you are probably rite but 4v, 3v and espacekilly did sign up to the epic pass.... |
Quite true and the price is similar.
2 days skiing at Val d'Isere etc...
Given the number of weekend skiers who are mobile there is clearly a demand for this kind of pass. In Grenoble we'd like something that just gave access to our local resorts; there have been some attempts but nothing serious has ever come of it due to disagreements and jealosies but dealing with a professional company like the CdA may be easier to put something in place.
That said, most of the medium and big resorts are really rammed during peak times, I could see participating in a card like this would be interesting for off peak periods, for the resorts.
I'll have to total up my spending on lift passes (for 2) at the end of the season. I'll probably be quite a bit below the full cost of this pass but I try and take advantage of as many offers as I can and I don't need more than say 75kms for a day's skiing.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| WASHOUT wrote: |
| @Davidof you are probably rite but 4v, 3v and espacekilly did sign up to the epic pass.... |
Probably the exact reason they won't (can't) sign up to this.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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... but the Epic pass has so many ifs, buts and small print sections which vary massively that no-one in their right mind will buy it to get access to multiple European areas. For someone who skis a lot in the US and wants a couple of short trips to Europe it has its attractions, but not in reverse. As an example, the Arlberg is included - but only for 3 days, and you must stay in one of their partner hotels for a minimum of 3 nights to qualify. So, spend $950 on a season pass and then spend €1000 or more on accommodation and get a €150 ticket free...
For existing schemes like the Salzburg Superski pass, the break even point for the season pass is somewhere around 15 days, compared to about 14 days for local passes. I've had 13 days in Saalbach-Hinterglemm this season, but my season is effectively over and it wasn't worth buying a season pass. A friend has had the same, but is currently in Austria again and skiing elsewhere in the Salzburg region, and bought the early bird Superski pass to cover him, which has resulted in a saving of about €200.
The Superski card is €725 for early purchase. If a card was available to cover more than 50% of the best resorts in Europe at €800 for early purchase, there would be a market for it. The key is the coverage - if you list the top 10 pass areas by visitor numbers in each of the main countries, you'd have to get at least half of them, and at least 2 in the top 5, before it becomes attractive. Having 200 ski resorts on one pass sounds good, but if 180 of them added together gives you 300kms of piste then it is a very niche product, especially if none of the other 20 are in the top 5 in their respective countries.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Agree epic is not worthwhile for a European only skier but not much in it! No small print in 3v, espacekilly, paradski or the Italian place. 4v small print ok but Arlberg a joke. I was planning a 7 days in 3v then 3 days in tignes, all I would need is a extra day in espacekilly not bad for 10 total skiing. Throw a 5 day in 4v and a week in Italy and you are very close to the £680 cost.
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Switzerland already has the Magic Pass at similar prices to this and it doesn't include the biggest or most popular resorts. There are no restrictions however.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| leggyblonde wrote: |
| Switzerland already has the Magic Pass at similar prices to this and it doesn't include the biggest or most popular resorts. There are no restrictions however. |
Yip - that includes all the smaller resorts in Valais (basically with exception of Verbier and Zermatt)
Apparently it was marketing response to 20K skiers from all over CH buying a 300CHF season pass for Sass Fee.
A season pass for Cham / Verbier also includes reciprocal free days plus various options at Portes Du Soleil / Les Diablarrets / Les Marecottes / St Gervais <etc>.
So this sort of thing sort of exists already in Europe.
| Quote: |
| If a card was available to cover more than 50% of the best resorts in Europe at €800 for early purchase, there would be a market for it. |
I would be careful what you wish for with these season passes that include multiple resorts.
In the USA / Canada most of the corporate resorts are aligned with either EPIC (vail resorts) or IKON pass (independent resorts) : see really good article above!
Problem is that that smaller resorts get bullied out of the market and denied season pass revenue when they most need it (November / December time).
Associate mountains get bought out by the larger corporations when they're strangled by revenue sharing schemes and waiting for a cheque in spring time.
Plus the cost of a day pass ends up becoming outrageous (like 150 dollars) because the resorts business model depends on people committing to a season pass every autumn rather than day tickets.
It is a bit like shopping in Amazon or buying all your grocery's at massive supermarket <etc>.
Good for the consumer in short term : but sucks balls once the corporations have a monopoly and there are no local stores left.
I like my small local ski hills : they are the ones who would really suffer from an alpine-wide season pass.
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| Haggis_Trap wrote: |
Plus the cost of a day pass ends up becoming outrageous (like 150 dollars) because the resorts business model depends on people committing to a season pass every autumn rather than day tickets.
I like my small local ski hills : they are the ones who would really suffer from an alpine-wide season pass. |
Really? I've never once been in a large resort with a small local hill next to it and woken up one morning and thought "I know, I'll abandon the pass I've paid for and pay extra today to try a small local hill for a change". On the other hand, last year I bought the Superski card and visited 4 resorts in 5 days because I could, and at no extra cost to me. Those resorts got income as a result, and that was income they would never have got without the area pass.
Price gouging on day tickets is a particularly American way of doing business. Same with trains in the UK - commit early, and you get a discount but leave it to the last minute and it costs extra. I'd say that this makes small local hills even more attractive for a day trip, since they're not reliant on season pass income and want to encourage day trippers rather than fending them off, so their prices stay low while the mega resort next door is overcrowded and charging 4 times as much for the day when you probably end up getting a similar amount of skiing.
For a recent example, I paid €310 for a 7-day Superski card rather than €286 for a Saalbach pass, or €247 for a 5 in 7 day pass. That's about €44 per day, or €41 per day for a local pass, or €50 for the 5 in 7. A day ticket in Maria Alm to ski the Hochkonig is €53.50, while Saalbach is €55. Steinplatte is €46, and Lofer is €43, with both offering about 45km of runs. If my option was to buy the 5 in 7 and then a day pass for each area I visit, I'd be paying about €10-15 extra per day for each day to be able to ski out of my "base" area. The net result of that is that I wouldn't do it - I visit the other areas because I can, and because I want some variety and to be able to discover new areas.
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FAQ
