New RSS standard for weather conditions and operating status helps progress the ski resort industry.
 
MTN.XML, a consortium of leading ski industry partners, suppliers and resorts, has announced an open xml standard for snow data reporting across the globe.

Incubated by Treeline Interactive, with support from SnoCountry Ski Areas Association and Resorts Interactive, the initiative now has more than 15 organizations working together to implement reporting standards. These organizations include resorts, point of sales providers, industry associations and a range of other service providers including Siriusware, aRes Travel, TrailTap, Snow Park Technologies, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, Sierra-at-Tahoe and many more.
 
Why is an open standard for snow data reporting so important? Ski resorts across the world provide data feeds of their mountain conditions and other related details, but many have their own unique format. This makes aggregating conditions and integrating them with media partners, including websites and mobile apps, an arduous process.

“By standardizing with MTN.XML, we’ll be able to automate the conditions reporting process from all resorts to our more than 4,200 media partners who receive SnoCountry reports,” said Tom Cottrill, president of SnoCountry. “In addition, we’ll all be able to communicate with a clear, concise and consistent message throughout all channels and platforms directly to all skiers and snowboarders.”
 
Technology within the ski industry has progressed exponentially over the past 10 years but there has never been a simple guideline for syndicating the most important info: how much snow has fallen and when, what trails and lifts are open, and what is going on at the mountain.

The primary goal of MTN.XML is to help share the most important information for the sport that so many love, quickly and easily, to enable the next level of experience changing technology.

"This (standard) will help us push accurate and up to date snow/weather conditions to people around the world," explained Colleen Dalton, Director of Guest Experience Marketing at Mammoth.
 
MTN.XML is free for all resorts to use and is an industry guide for how to make their information more useful and accessible. While the initial focus was the standard snow, trail and grooming information, the heightened goal is support for tomorrow and beyond. The standard has embraced the help of companies like Snow Park Technologies, leader in resort terrain park management, and one of the primary sports organizers for the XGames, to outline standards for progressive reporting stats like half pipe and terrain park feature level reporting.
 
"This is the information everyone who loves snow sports needs to know, we are helping resorts to push this information to their guests." says Jake Fields, the founder of Treeline Interactive. "The current process is antiquated with no standard, resulting in excess development costs and millions of dollars of lost revenue within the resort industry.”

MTN.XML is an open standard for ski resort conditions reporting. More information can be found at http://www.mtnxml.org