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Meet Emma – Your Epic Mountain Assistant

March 14, 2018
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There is no better way to plan and enjoy your vacation at a location that you might not be perfectly familiar with than having a local guide that you can ask for suggestions. The IT guys at Vail Resorts have recognized that need and next season they are giving you their best attempt of developing an AI local ski buddy/travel agent/personal Butler - Emma.


Emma is your Epic Mountain Assistant, the world’s first digital mountain assistant to help guide guests while on their ski and snowboard vacation at nine of the Company’s resorts. Emma is an interactive mountain assistant who uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to answer a wide range of guests’ questions about their ski vacation. Emma will debut for the 2018-19 winter season at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado; Park City in Utah; Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood in Tahoe; and Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia, Canada.
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Through short message service (SMS) text, Emma answers guest questions in real time. On-demand information can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, resulting in instant service and a seamless experience for guests from exploring a resort’s village to learning if a favorite slope is groomed to recommendations for the best après-ski location. Topics such as snow conditions and lift line wait times, parking and in-resort wayfinding, ski school, lift tickets and equipment rental options, on- and off-mountain dining and activity recommendations and more can be accessed through Emma. From planning a ski vacation to arrival and all the way through to departure, Emma offers guests an unprecedented breadth of information tailored to each resort. If Emma cannot answer a question, she will seamlessly connect guests to chat with a live agent for further assistance. As Emma interacts with guests, her knowledge base and insight will continue to expand through both human and machine learning.

Emma will be launched as an “alpha” version to a very small community of users this March to prepare for her debut in the 2018-19 winter season. Future generations of Emma may include integration with Facebook Messenger, voice assistants like Alexa, wearable technology notifications and Vail Resorts’ groundbreaking EpicMix mobile application.

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