No more waiting at the ski lifts and the hassle of finding your way at the crossroads, all thanks to a mobile app? This is the objective of Skiif, thought of in the manner of a Waze winter sports.
Who doesn’t know Waze? The community GPS application, despite some hiccups in recent months, has no less than 17 million monthly users in France. Skiif aims to be its equivalent, but to be used during mountain skiing trips. A very good idea, which we owe to Lalée Pinoncely, director of global communications at Quantis and entrepreneur from Lyon.
Facilitate navigation on the slopes
Skiif started from a personal experience of Lalée Pinoncely, when she skied in the Méribel area. Faced with difficulty finding a friend, her daughter innocently suggested the idea that an application like Map or Google Maps could be useful in cases like this. Two years later and a million euros raised later, and the application was born.
Skiif therefore presents itself in the form of an interactive map with a search bar. It is possible to plan your routes in advance according to different parameters: the shortest route, or the most difficult, everyone will find their way. It is even possible to ask the application to estimate the travel time between several points in the station. “ With one click, you can go from point A to point B » explains Pinoncely.
More than just GPS
If Waze is very successful, it is also due to its community aspect, which Pinoncely took inspiration from to make Skiif even more attractive. Users can interact with each other, report the condition of a slope or if a particular ski lift is crowded with people. All reports thus issued remain active on the application interface for thirty minutes.
Another very well thought out aspect of Skiif: the features guaranteeing user safety. The application allows you to contact 112 with a single click on the SOS button integrated into it and gives users the possibility of giving their precise GPS coordinates to facilitate the work of emergency workers. For Pinoncely, Skiif also represents a significant advantage for the resorts: “ For their part, it allows them to broadcast the streams and not have too many people in the same place, she explains. We know that 80% of skiers only cover 20% of the area. In this way, we improve all the useful aspects that go with the skiing experience. “.
Skiif is completely free, but its use is currently limited in Savoie, to the Les 3 Vallées area. However, its creator plans to extend its use beyond our borders: Europe, USA, Japan and Canada.
Source : 20 minutes
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