Tahoe resorts pioneer yield-management pricing system

Yield management tweaking prices day by day to wring out every possible dollar of revenue has arrived on the ski slopes, and Kirkwood and Diamond Peak at Lake Tahoe are among the pioneers.

The two resorts are among the first nine in the nation to sign on with Liftopia Inc., a San Francisco company that's pitching itself to consumers as a Web site liftopia.com where they can find deeply discounted ski tickets.

Behind the scenes within the ski industry, the company offers the ability to change lift-ticket prices rapidly and often.

A resort that expects a couple of days of less-than-perfect weather, for instance, could trim its prices on liftopia.com, says company co-founder Ron Schneidermann.

Or resorts can use the site to boost sales in traditionally slow periods the weekend after New Year's Day, for instance.

"They can slice and dice it any way they want," says Schneidermann.

Similar yield-management tools were pioneered in the air travel industry and are commonly used by hotel reservations systems designed to maximize the revenue from each room.

But Liftopia positions itself as the first system that allows ski resorts to sell excess inventory space on its slopes on-line.

Jeremy Jacobson, the leisure sales manager at the North Lake Tahoe Resorts Association and former sales director of Kirkwood, says the Liftopia pricing model helps resorts cover their fixed costs without cannibalizing other sales.

The discounted tickets sold through liftopia.com are non-refundable and can be used only on specified days.

So far, Schneidermann says, nine resorts nationwide have signed up, and another six to 10 are talking with Liftopia. The ski industry, he says, traditionally is slow to embrace new business models.

Diamond Peak, a resort near Incline Village, doesn't yet have a great interest in the yield-management possibilities of Liftopia, says resort spokeswoman Missy Hinton.

Instead, the resort signed up with Liftopia simply as another sales outlet.

"The basic idea is to get our name out," Hinton says. "The more places we can sell tickets, the better."