Know the waiting time at the lifts, know if a slope is clogged or icy. Now the Skiif app allows it. This authentic “Waze of skiing” arrived on December 15 on smartphones in the 3 Vallées ski area (Savoie).
The latter, which includes the resorts of Val Thorens, Menuires, Méribel and Courchevel, is the largest in the world. It covers 250,000 hectares, has 200 lifts and 318 alpine ski slopes.
Replace paper plan
Obviously, when you’re not familiar with this area, it’s not hard to get lost. “I’ve never gotten lost, but it’s comforting to have an app that allows you not to get lost,” Lalée Pinoncély, founder of Skiif, jokes to Tech&Co.
The business leader from Lyon remembers a day in the mountains, during which she had to “give (her) friend a way so she could come meet her at the restaurant.” “It was a pain, and yet I knew the station well,” she explains.
After a brief conversation on the subject with his daughter, a business school student, an idea emerged: create an application to facilitate travel, even in the mountains.
“Service features”
Therefore, it is quite natural that Skiif has become the “Waze of skiing”. Lalée Pinoncély also highlights the large number of “service functionalities”.
“You can share with your skiers (your friends in the app, Editor’s note), a meeting place. Find the nearest bathroom, be guided by the audio guide and even create your route.
A bit like Plans, the online mapping application developed by Apple, or Google Maps, Skiif allows you to create, with a single click, a route to your home. “For data protection reasons, this is not the person’s home, but the snow front (the ski outing, editor’s note).”
The development of this application took two years. “We started with open data, such as Open Snow Map, and performed data concatenation and smoothing work. Then we conceptualized the interface to make it intuitive.”
Skiif Pro and internationalization
The start-up plans to develop the “Skiif Pro” tool, designed for ski resorts and their staff. The objective? Recover data transmitted (anonymized) by users, to alleviate congestion in certain areas of the slopes.
In addition to “Skiif Pro”, the application looks beyond the 3 Vallées area, where it is currently confined. Until 2024, no less than 160 stations will benefit from the service. All ski areas in the Alps (France, Italy, Switzerland) will be covered, as well as some resorts in the United States, Canada and Japan, the company promises.
In 12 days, 20,000 people downloaded the app. “A good start”, but Lalée Pinoncély aims for “300,000” downloads by “March 2024”. An “ambitious bet” that aims to materialize thanks to the “old technique of word of mouth.”
In beta from December 1 to 15, the application is available, free of charge, on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Source: BFM TV
