28 / 29 March in Zauchensee
We started the WS Day 2017 on Tuesday morning in Zauchensee with perfect weather conditions on the slopes. Together with Michael Walchhofer, we dedicated ourselves to an activity that occupies us every day but is often neglected in our free time - skiing.
After a joint lunch, moderator Günther Reichhalter, who accompanied us both days, welcomed us and motivated us for two productive and exciting days. In the station mode, we then had the opportunity to get to know our programme better and to exchange ideas among ourselves on a wide variety of topics. The lively exchange among the ski school directors was also in the foreground at this WS Day.
We introduced you in more detail to the topic of online marketing and went into the most important aspects, especially the newsletter and search engine optimisation. With the newsletter tool Rapidmail, which can be connected to the ski school programme, you can easily send newsletters to your customers. This gives you the opportunity to attract your customers to the website, the online shop or your Facebook profile and to get more bookings.
We also informed you about the advantages of the (mobile) check-in and took your ideas and wishes on board. Mobile check-in saves time and effort and also provides you with valuable customer data (e.g. email addresses) that you can use for marketing purposes (e.g. newsletters).
A discussion on different ticket printing methods and payment terminals was also initiated and the advantages of direct thermal printing were discussed. Direct thermal tickets replace thermal tape and can be used for all printers. They ensure easy handling and excellent print quality.
Useful tools are also the notification options for ski school instructors via WS Notifier. We developed this app to further improve and facilitate organisation within the ski school. It allows you to send push notifications to your ski instructors via the ski school programme. The WS Notifier is an addition to WS Ski Mobil.
We have also updated the weekly calendar of the ski school software. In the workshop, you also learned how to easily report with WS Ski Mobil and what other advantages this mobile version has. The ski instructors use a barcode scanner to report, check the validity of the tickets and give an account of their working day.
We also informed you about the possibility of using WS key figures to extract informative business data from the ski school software and to obtain individual evaluations, for example of the turnover in a weekly comparison.
A topic that you also have to deal with in your daily ski school routine is the Austrian cash register obligation. We worked with you on how to deal with the new chip for signing receipts and which other aspects need to be considered in relation to the cash register.
Afterwards, we ended the first day together at our gala for the twentieth anniversary of Waldhart Software in a cosy and entertaining way.
We welcomed you with interesting future topics on the second day. Elias Kärle from the University of Innsbruck, with which we cooperate, informed us about semantic technologies in tourism.
Alexander Wahler, also from the University of Innsbruck, introduced us to the topic of chatbots and presented an innovative example from the Arosa Ski School. Through the cooperation with the University of Innsbruck, we are tackling further innovative trends and have developed the first chatbot worldwide for a ski school in Arosa. Chatbots enable 24/7 support for guests, who can quickly access a wealth of information regarding the ski school and thus benefit from excellent service around the clock. Annotation of the website with schema.org ensures that new technologies such as IPAs (e.g. Alexa) and chatbots can access the website information. We also offer professional support in the area of website annotation.
Hannes Waldhart gave exciting inputs on various possibilities of online marketing, especially on the use of YouTube as a marketing platform. Our goal is to give you access to the most modern technologies, which is why we also advise you on the topic of marketing using a YouTube channel.
A special innovation from Waldhart is the integrated online shop as opposed to the stand-alone shop. The possibility to book online is also becoming increasingly important in the ski school industry. We have developed the first integrated online shop for the Warth ski school. The advantages of the integrated version are its modern design and simplified booking. The new shop is responsive, which makes it ideal for smartphone bookings. The aim is to generate more bookings via the online shop. We operate the integrated shop parallel to the stand-alone shop. You can switch to the integrated online shop immediately. Please register early for the changeover so that you can benefit from the new shop as soon as possible.
Finally, Christian Petter reported on the experiences he has gathered during his numerous customer visits in the past months and on the new development approaches he is pursuing. During a visit, Christian takes a close look at the processes in the ski school, deals with concrete problems and makes suggestions for improvement. Among other things, this concerns the meeting point at the assembly point, the internal processes in the ski school or the organisation of the guest race. Our goal is to be even more responsive to our customers and to adapt our software specifically to the individual processes of each ski school. In order to further advance the essential process optimisation, Christian wants to continue the customer visits in the future.
The WS Day was rounded off with an interesting tour of the Atomic ski factory in Altenmarkt im Pongau. There we gained deep insights into the production of skis from the individual parts to the series model.
