Every ski season brings fresh snow and, unfortunately, a familiar headache: duplicate guest accounts. It’s a challenge nearly every resort faces. Guests forget passwords, misspell names, switch emails, or simply can’t recall how they logged in last time. The result? Multiple profiles tied to the same guest, each with the possibility of its own pass number, transaction history, and RFID media.
On the surface, this may seem like a minor nuisance. It isn’t. Ask anyone who has a role in managing this effort, and they’ll confirm it is a big issue. Duplicate guest records can lead to significant operational frustration behind the scenes, from inaccurate reporting and delayed guest service to wasted time reconciling data and unnecessary reprints of access media. Clean, consolidated data isn’t just a CRM goal; it’s essential to an efficient operation.
Why Guest Account Duplication Happens
Guests’ digital habits are often the root cause. They:
- Forget existing login credentials and create new accounts instead of resetting passwords.
- Use different email addresses across seasons (work vs. personal).
- Re-register family members or children under slightly different names.
Even the most tech-savvy guests can create duplicates without realizing it, especially when excitement for fresh powder outweighs the patience to hassle with a password reset.
Best Practices for Reducing Duplicates
Fortunately, there are several steps ski areas can take to prevent and help minimize the chaos:
- Require email validation and guide guests to existing accounts
Enforce unique email addresses paired with friendly prompts like “Looks like you already have an account. Try resetting your password.” Add purchase flow reminders like “Already have a pass with us? You’ll see fewer duplicates over time. - Offer password help front and center.
Make “Forgot password?” options highly visible and simple to retrieve, which helps prevent guests from taking the “new account” shortcut. - Leverage backend tools to detect and merge profiles.
Modern systems can flag “similar contacts” based on shared data such as name, email, birth date, or phone number. The accesso Paradox℠ feature uses a similar contact tab and merge tools to help staff identify and unify redundant records quickly, retaining purchase history or pass data. - Smart linking
Allow guests to connect across households, i.e., children tied to both parents’ accounts, and to reuse existing RFID cards. With solutions like accesso Paradox, the “Entourage” functionality goes beyond traditional household setups, giving operators a simpler way to maintain accurate relationships and preserve guest history. - Monitor and manage regularly.
Duplicate cleanup isn’t a one-time project. Regular reports and spot checks keep databases healthy, especially after peak sales periods.
Building Toward a Cleaner Future
At accesso, we recognize that this is a widespread industry issue affecting operations, reporting accuracy, guest experience and even revenue. It’s simply not sustainable to maintain clean guest data through SQL workaround tricks and various spreadsheet functions. That’s why our product teams are continuously developing smarter detection, merging and prevention tools within our ski platforms, guided by client feedback.
Modern guest management systems, like accesso Paradox, offer an “Entourage” relationship model that goes beyond traditional family trees, allowing any set of guests to be linked and edited without losing individual history. Each guest retains their unique profile, preserving purchases, passes, lessons, or program history.
“Entourage” capabilities also enable sharing perks and entitlements within linked groups, streamlining comp tickets, discounts, and benefits distribution. Each guest keeps a unique profile. Operationally, this means fewer manual merges and re-issues when families change perks administration, and better segmentation for clubs and teams.
Guest behavior will always keep us on our toes, but better design, clearer prompts and evolving technology can keep data and operations running efficiently with every season. If this is an area your resort is actively working to improve, our ski tech team would be happy to share what we’re learning with operators across the industry.
Connect with us today and learn more about accesso’s SkiReadySM technology.