Overview

POWDR runs more than 15 outdoor recreation businesses, from ski resorts like Snowbird, Copper Mountain, and Mt. Bachelor to Zion National Park Lodge. Every winter morning, each mountain has to tell its guests the same things before they decide to drive up: which lifts are turning, which trails are open, and how much snow fell overnight.

That information lives in the Daily Operating Report (DOR), and it flows from one source to marketing websites, mobile apps, and the status boards at the base of the mountain. When the DOR is right and on time, guests plan with confidence. When it is late or wrong, they arrive to closed lifts, and the resort hears about it.

POWDR was paying a high annual license fee for third-party software to run the DOR. Blue Drop Labs moved it onto the platform POWDR already owned. The result: software costs down 70%, zero downtime across millions of requests a month, and a system POWDR can change in weeks instead of waiting on a vendor's roadmap.

The problem: paying a premium for a system that failed at 6 AM

The licensed software cost a lot and delivered little. It slowed down under load. Simple feature requests took months, if they were built at all, and nothing could be tailored to how POWDR's resorts actually operate.

The worst failures came at the worst times. Snow reports are posted before dawn, and on Friday mornings ahead of a weekend rush the system would crash while staff were trying to publish overnight conditions. That meant 6 AM calls, guests without updated information, and a resort's first impression of the day left to chance.

The approach: one platform for marketing content and operating data

Rather than replace one vendor with another, we built the DOR into the platform that already powers POWDR's marketing websites. Lift status, trail status, snow reports, forecasts, parking, roads, terrain, and retail and service schedules are entered once by resort staff and published everywhere from the same source.

Because the platform is POWDR's own, every screen reflects how resort teams actually work: a dashboard that shows the day at a glance, snow reports on each mountain's schedule, and place status that can be scheduled in advance instead of updated by hand.

POWDR’s Daily Operating Report dashboard: open trails, open lifts, the primary snow sensor, and a snow report with overnight, 24-hour, 7-day, season-to-date, and base-depth totals
The Daily Operating Report inside POWDR’s own platform: the lift, trail, and snow data that feeds websites, apps, and on-mountain displays, now under POWDR’s control.
POWDR’s Snow Reports list: dated entries with a time, a Primary location, and Edit actions, plus an Add snow report button
Snow reports are entered once, on POWDR’s own schedule, and flow to every channel from there.
POWDR’s Scheduled Place Status view: dated schedules that switch places such as Gemstone Mining, the Rooftop Balcony, and Summer Scenic Tram Rides between Closed and Open
Scheduled place status: opening and closing times for on-mountain services are set in advance and published automatically.

What changed for the people running the mountain

The 6 AM calls stopped. Resort staff publish the morning report and get on with the day instead of chasing a vendor's support line. Emergency escalations that used to be a regular event are gone, and the time they consumed now goes to guests and operations.

Features in weeks, not years

When a resort identifies a need, POWDR can budget for it and have it built in weeks. New capabilities ship every month. That speed changed the relationship between staff and the software: people who had stopped asking for improvements now suggest them, because they see requests turn into working features tailored to their mountain.

Reliability on the mornings that matter

The DOR only works if it is accurate and immediate. Conditions change by the hour, and guests and staff make decisions on what the report says. The new platform handles millions of requests a month with zero downtime, and every update reaches the website, the app, and the boards on the mountain at the same moment.

An on-mountain display at Snowbird showing the trail map beside a live Trail Status board listing runs in Peruvian Gulch, Gad Valley, and Mineral Basin as Open, On Hold, or Closed, last updated at 9:42 AM
The DOR in action: a live trail status board on the mountain at Snowbird, updated from the same platform that feeds the website and app.

The bottom line

POWDR turned an underperforming annual expense into an asset it controls: 70% lower cost, no downtime, and the freedom to change the system as the business changes.

Paying a premium for software you can't change? Tell us what it costs you, and we'll show you what owning it could look like.

Have a platform, cost, or reliability problem like this one?

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