Using AI for Ski Resort Management

Summary

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Bloomberg Businessweek: Using AI for Ski Resort Management

Date: July 8, 2026
Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec, Nathan Hager, Karen Moscow
Guests: Joe Hessian (CEO & Co-Founder, Snow Cloud / Snow Partners), Doug Parini (CEO, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort)

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Episode Overview

This episode examines how technology—and specifically cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI)—is transforming operations in the ski resort industry, focusing on the recent partnership between Snow Cloud and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The discussion covers the modernization of guest experience, the complexity of implementing new tech, and both operational and strategic impacts of AI for year-round resort management.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Modernizing Ski Resort Operations

• Industry Context:
  • Ski resorts, like Jackson Hole, often rely on outdated, legacy software platforms that no longer meet modern guest expectations.
  • "Legacy platforms have been around for 20, 30 years, aren't evolving to the guest experience that people want today. And ski resorts are complicated, so it's taken a while to get it dialed in." — Joe Hessian (03:26)
• Snow Cloud’s Mission:
  • Snow Cloud was created by resort operators aiming to upgrade the technology backbone of the ski and hospitality industry.
  • The objective: streamline processes, enhance guest experiences, and grow business intelligence capabilities.

2. The Need for Change: Guest Experience Shortfalls

• Mobile-First Expectations:
  • Previous systems limited guests to on-premise purchases and interactions. Modern guests expect seamless mobile access.
  • "Guests can buy and purchase for themselves on a mobile phone... We're not tied to a PC, to a POS, a point of sale in an office anymore. Now it's like we're unleashed and we can go wherever and sell anything we offer almost." — Doug Parini (04:57)
• One Platform for Everything:
  • Ski resorts sell a variety of services (lift tickets, rentals, lessons, food) each typically requiring a separate system—an operational headache.
  • "Being able to sell whatever they want to purchase, because in the past we've had multiple platforms because the ski industry is such a complex business... So, you know, being able to sell it all on one platform at one time and make it easy for the guests... it's a big unlock." — Doug Parini (07:50)

3. Where AI Makes the Difference

• Data-Driven Decisions:
  • AI provides advanced analytics, helping resorts predict guest numbers, optimize staffing, set dynamic pricing, and manage capacity more precisely.
  • "AI now can crunch numbers and do all types of analysis in ways that we can never write multiple regression models and give you predictive analysis, which then can tie back to staffing levels... So it goes as deep as planning and analytics for that piece, but also for the guest." — Joe Hessian (06:21)
• Customization At Scale:
  • AI paves the way for highly customized guest experiences: from equipment rental to lesson planning and activity recommendations.
  • "It's really great to be able to have in the future, be able to give people the option to... customize this exactly to what you need because I think AI allows us to make it extremely customizable. For a much bigger group of people." — Joe Hessian (07:18)

4. Breaking Down Barriers to Technology Adoption

• Complexity & Lack of Fit:
  • Off-the-shelf tech does not fit the multifaceted needs of ski resorts; existing industry software is outdated and hard to replace.
  • "You couldn't call up Salesforce and say, hey, I understand you do some really good software. But no, like you're serious. Like, this is an industry that was underserved big time." — Nathan Hager (09:34)
  • "It's 30 year old software that's on prem servers... it's just not native to what the resort needs as a platform." — Joe Hessian (09:45)
• Big Investment Decisions:
  • Both leaders highlight the importance of thoughtful technology spend and measurable returns on investment.
  • "As a tech CEO who is in a bootstrap tech company, you know, it's a, it's a moment of can this make our life more efficient or is it just going to cost us a ton of money to experiment?... So it's trying to find the right use at the right time to make sure that we don't overspend." — Joe Hessian (10:32)
  • "We do feel there's a return in this because of the guest experience and how important that is to us. So if we up level that guest experience, people are going to have a better time, they're going to come back to us." — Doug Parini (11:23)

5. Year-Round Appeal and Broader Trends

• Beyond Snow:
  • Resorts are embracing year-round experiences, further enabled by flexible tech and robust digital engagement.
  • "If it's hot here in New York, it's a good spot to get away... But, you know, Mountain Creek, we have a water park... in Jackson Hole... we're seeing a lot of people here right now... between biking and hiking and scenic rides around the border of Grand Teton National Park." — Joe Hessian & Doug Parini (12:07–12:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Learning from Other Industries:
  "I spent a long time actually in Lean Six Sigma designing learning areas to try to get more people their first time to come back a second and third time across the industry." — Joe Hessian (03:15)
• On the Leap to Mobile:
  "I'm kind of blown away when you said people couldn't do things mobile before. Why was it so difficult?" — Nathan Hager (08:59)
• On the Business Case for AI:
  "ROI is important to us. So we want to make sure we're spending our tokens in the right spot." — Joe Hessian (11:02)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:05 — Joe Hessian on Snow Cloud’s background and the need for tech in ski resorts
• 04:04 — Doug Parini on why Jackson Hole wanted to level up the guest experience
• 04:57 — Doug Parini on the shift from POS-only to mobile-first guest services
• 05:56 — Joe Hessian explains where AI fits into Snow Cloud’s platform
• 07:50 — Doug Parini on the impact of technology: one platform, many services, mobile
• 09:34 — Discussion on software limitations and why ski resorts lag behind on tech
• 10:32 — Joe Hessian talks about resource challenges and ROI for AI implementation
• 11:23 — Doug Parini on the business case and CapEx for guest tech
• 12:07 — Year-round business models and tech’s role in diversifying activities

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a deep dive into the intersection of cloud technology and AI in a highly specific context—the ski resort industry. The conversation demystifies both the challenges of legacy technology and the promise of AI and cloud-based systems to transform not just efficiency, but the very nature of resort guest services. Listeners come away with an understanding of how tailored, modern platforms are helping resorts compete and thrive in a changing hospitality landscape.

Transcript

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[Nathan Hager]

You may know Jackson Hole Mountain Resort for its terrain, its unmatched vertical. Are you a skier?

[Karen Moscow]

I. I am.

[Bloomberg Host]

You are?

[Karen Moscow]

Do you know them well? I know Jackson Hole. They're on my bucket list. I haven't been skiing there yet. I have been there in the summer, which is great.

[Nathan Hager]

All right, so you need to probably get there. You could even go now because they are known for their year round destination against the majestic Tetons. But with anything technology, the cloud increasingly part of doing business. Doesn't matter who you are. Including a ski resort on that Jackson Hole Mountain Resort this spring took a step toward what it says was quote modernizing resort operations and embracing a truly connected guest experience. So here to tell us all about it in studio in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio is Joe Hessian. He is CEO and co founder of Snow Cloud, also founder and CEO of its parent company Snow Partners. And then we've also got with us from Teton Village, Wyoming at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is Doug Parini. He is CEO of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Gentlemen, so good to have you here. I want to start, first of all, tell us, Joe, about what you guys are doing, your platform, because you do a lot of different things, but you said the last few years you've really been thinking about technology and what's needed, especially when it comes to it sounds like resorts and hospitality.

[Joe Hessian]

Yeah. So we're resort operators from heart. That's kind of our background where we come from. We focus on the experience, the process.

[Nathan Hager]

And Mountain Creek in Vernon, New Jersey, American dream.

[Doug Parini]

Big snow.

[Joe Hessian]

American dream. Yes. And we, you know, I spent a long time actually in Lean Six Sigma designing learning areas to try to get more people their first time to come back a second and third time across the industry.

[Nathan Hager]

So Jack Welch of you.

[Joe Hessian]

Yeah, Variations Evil. Love all these Jack Welch quotes. Love Lean Six Sigma. But what I found is working with some of the greatest brands around the world trying to improve the guest experience. Technology was the thing they were missing. And you hear it time and time again. Legacy platforms have been around for 20, 30 years, aren't evolving to the guest experience that people want today. And ski resorts are complicated, so it's taken a while to get it dialed in.

[Nathan Hager]

Doug, so come on in on the conversation. Tell us how you got together with Joe and his team and what were you guys looking to do at your resort?

[Doug Parini]

Yeah, yeah, thanks. So Joe and I, I've known Joe for a bunch of years. You know, he's been well known in the industry and definitely always kind of on the forefront looking for what's, what's new and what the opportunity is. And, you know, we were really looking to up level our guest experience. And the mountain speaks for itself. It is world class. The terrain is amazing. And we really wanted a platform that could help us meet the guests where they are and improve the technology side of this to make it easier for the guests. And what Joe had going on with Snow Cloud seemed like right up our alley. So it's been a great process.

[Nathan Hager]

Yeah.

[Karen Moscow]

Talk a little bit, Doug. Just about, you know, exactly what part of the guest experience maybe was falling flat behind. You know, this, this partnership. And, and really what. Maybe an example of, you know, something that has changed now and enhanced the guest experience.

[Doug Parini]

Yeah, that's a great question. Because, you know, our guest experience has always been a priority of ours. No matter what we do, we're always looking to make it easier, make it more fun, and just not inhibit the guest experience in any way through a negative experience. And, you know, that platform, the platform we had, it was Great. It did, like, it worked really well for us. For a lot of years, we were just looking for something different. And, you know, an example of what Snow Cloud allows us to do is more of what guests expect in the world these days. We can. Guests can buy and purchase for themselves on a mobile phone. We can sell on a mobile phone anywhere they are. We're not tied to a PC, to a pos, a point of sale in an office anymore. Now it's like we're unleashed and we can go wherever and sell anything we offer almost. So, yeah, it's been great.

[Nathan Hager]

All right, so, you know, Joe, come back in on here and talk to us about kind of basic raw technology. And then there's the AI layer. So I'm just curious where AI plays into all of this.

[Joe Hessian]

Yeah, like, I think because we're built on modern platforms, right? It's cloud based on Azure, it's built in modern styles. We can put LL models into it, all different types of models. I think what we're going to see for us at Snowcloud and working with our resort partners like Jackson Hole, who've been fantastic, is analytics. The things they can learn about their business. Are they pricing things the right way? Do they have the right capacities? Are things flowing the right way? Staffing, this is like one that I'm really excited about. We can now predict. Like, years ago, I actually had a project. I worked for a big publicly traded ski company, and they gave me six months with MIT professors to figure out how to predict skier visits ahead of time using all the data we had. AI now can crunch numbers and do all types of analysis in ways that we can never write multiple regression models and give you predictive analysis, which then can tie back to staffing levels to make sure that when you're peak, you have the right people, the right service. So it goes as deep as planning and analytics for that piece, but also for the guest. It's hard to book a ski vacation. It's not like people, they show up, they need skis. What type of skis do you need? Lessons? Do your kids need to be in a program? How many days are you going to see? You're going to be there for five days. You're going to ski three to those five days or four of the five days. The products can be a bit intimidating. So it's really great to be able to have in the future, be able to give people the option to. We can customize this exactly to what you need because I think AI allows us to make it extremely customizable. For a much bigger group of people.

[Nathan Hager]

So, Doug, come on back, because I'm just curious what has been the biggest change you mentioned about? And people can be anywhere and they can certainly access your resort. We kind of tease that you can run a ski resort entirely by phone. Is that really true?

[Doug Parini]

It looks like it's heading in that direction. Being able to do that, meet the guests where they are, is huge. Also, I think being able to sell whatever they want to purchase, because in the past we've had multiple platforms because the ski industry is such a complex business. We sell so many different things, services, food and beverage lessons, lift tickets and all that. So, you know, being able to sell it all on one platform at one time and make it easy for the guests. So the guests can get out and ski or mountain bike or whatever their adventure is. They can get out there more quickly and they're not held back because of our technology. You know, it's a big unlock.

[Joe Hessian]

Yeah, yeah. Like a real life example of what that might look like is in the past, if you had a service issue needed to buy something extra, you'd have to go to a spot where with a computer connected to the wall to do that. Now, in theory, a server at Jackson Hole at their restaurant on the mountain could book your kids into ski school the next day. We're not quite there yet, but the technology's there. So we're opening up the door that every person at the resort can actually enable the guests to do whatever they want and eventually allow the guests to do that much easier themselves as well.

[Nathan Hager]

I have to just say, Doug, I'm almost kind of blown away when you said people couldn't do things mobile before. Why was it so difficult? Cause I just think about everything that I can do on my phone. I mean, as much as I kind of hate it sometimes, I'm amazed at the amount of things. Why weren't you guys like on mobile before?

[Doug Parini]

You know, I think that's probably. Joe probably has a good answer for this one. But I'll say from my perspective, we are so complex that there's no plug and play software for the whole business. And, you know, so we were really limited by the technology that was available to us.

[Nathan Hager]

So you couldn't call up Salesforce and say, hey, I understand you do some really good software. But no, like you're serious. Like, this is an industry that was underserved big time.

[Joe Hessian]

It's 30 year old software that's on prem servers. And what's interesting is a lot of resorts on premise yeah, and they were trying to get, you know, people are trying to get toast to make them rental software and people trying to get square people. A lot of resorts are using square and it's just not native to what the resort needs as a platform. So it was a, it was a missed opportunity. And it's something that interesting. It's the story of old legacy platform going to modern stuff.

[Karen Moscow]

Joe, we were talking with John authors just a bit ago about the spend that companies have to face when they're implementing AI. And what is the biggest challenge for implementing AI for a business at this scale? Is it needing to pay for computing capacity? Is it training your employees to learn how to use this?

[Joe Hessian]

You know, we're essentially a bootstrapped tech company. Right. So as a tech CEO who is in a bootstrap tech company, you know, it's a, it's a moment of can this make our life more efficient or is it just going to cost us a ton of money to experiment? And would I rather let the big players, like, I love watching you on Bloomberg talk about this and say, okay, they went all in another throttling back and thinking, thankfully I didn't have to make that mistake.

[Nathan Hager]

Right.

[Joe Hessian]

So it's trying to find the right use at the right time to make sure that we don't overspend. And ROI is important to us.

[Nathan Hager]

Yeah.

[Joe Hessian]

So we want to make sure we're spending our tokens in the right spot.

[Nathan Hager]

Doug, how did you think about to the capex spend here? Right, like you've got, you know, money, you've got to allocate to different things. You got to make sure that the facilities are up to snuff and that you keep your, your customers happy. How did you think about, you know, justifying where you were going to, to do this tech spend?

[Doug Parini]

Yeah, I think that's a great question too. And that, that was a lot of discussions, a lot of conversations about, you know, investing in this or not. We do feel there's a return in this because of the guest experience and how important that is to us. So if we up level that guest experience, people are going to have a better time, they're going to come back to us. But yeah, I mean, we're constantly looking at where to put those dollars, but this was an easy one.

[Nathan Hager]

All right, just to wrap up, we've got about a minute or so real quickly. I mean, we've had a heat wave, so we haven't really been talking about or thinking about snow. And we know that that is part of your world, but you guys are open around seasons. Joe, let me first just ask you, you, I mean, what is it? What are the trends that you're seeing with consumers kind of year round when it's not connected to snow?

[Doug Parini]

Yeah.

[Joe Hessian]

So still for us, other businesses like Mountain Creek and Big Snow, we're year round snow. So if it's hot here in New York, it's a good spot to get away. But you know, Mountain Creek, we have a water park. But the time I've spent out with Jackson Hole and Doug can talk about this more. But you know, if you're in the New York area and you want to get away, Doug will probably tell you his temperature the last week, but it definitely wasn't 100. I'll tell, I'll tell you that much.

[Nathan Hager]

Yeah, exactly. Doug, come on in. Got about 30 seconds for you. You are around the year people can go to your resort. What are you seeing?

[Doug Parini]

Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing a lot of people here right now and the weather is amazing. I've heard about the heat wave back east and we have a ton to do here between biking and hiking and scenic rides around the border of Grand Teton National Park. Ton of activity here and it's a beautiful must see location in the summertime as well as winter.

[Karen Moscow]

All right.

[Nathan Hager]

Love it. Yeah, that area is just stunning out there. And I got to say, I've been to Mountain Creek like years ago with my daughter. It's like a killer park. It's pretty wild. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Really great stuff to hear what's going on. Joining us, of course, Joe Hessian, CEO and co founder of Snow Cloud. And Doug Perini is CEO of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, joining us right here on Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Guys, thank you so much. Bring on the snow.

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