A unified digital platform for 50+ ski resort destinations

One pass, one app, every mountain

The Ikon Pass gives skiers and snowboarders access to more than 50 destinations across the US and around the world. But the digital experience was fragmented: a portfolio of disconnected resort apps built in local markets, each with its own design, content, and capabilities. Alterra Mountain Company brought Bttr. in to consolidate that landscape into a single, centralized platform that could serve every owned and partner resort under one roof.

The ambition was a B2B2C powerhouse. For guests, a single app for discovery, planning, on-mountain experience, and post-trip recap. For Alterra and its partner resorts, access to data at scale and the infrastructure to systemize personalized content, offers, and promotions across the network.

UX audit: Getting intimate with existing content

Designing for every mountain, every skier, every moment of the trip

Consolidating 50+ destinations into one experience meant reconciling enormous variation: different resort sizes, terrain, services, partner relationships, and local content systems. The app also had to span the full arc of a guest's relationship with skiing, from idle daydreaming in summer to standing at the base of a lift in a whiteout.

Audit, journey, benchmark, validate

The strategic foundation rested on four parallel research tracks. In addition to auditing the LMAs, we benchmarked against direct competitors and out-of-category players in travel, hospitality, and outdoor recreation to learn from adjacent patterns. We mapped the end-to-end customer journey, from initial discovery through pass purchase, trip planning, arrival, on-mountain experience, and the days after a trip ends.

Six rounds of user testing ran throughout the project, validating concepts, surfacing pitfalls early, and identifying which proposed features carried real weight versus which were nice ideas that didn't survive contact with real skiers.

Service blueprint: mapping the end-to-end customer journey

Designing for every kind of skier, and every kind of mountain

Research distilled into archetypes that covered key customer segments and destination typologies. The user archetypes fueled the development of our cast of characters, a fictional family and their friends. This allowed us to design to a robust set of use cases, including edge cases like minors who can't legally have an account, teens who might spend their parents' resort credits, and the head of household who handles the booking and planning for the entire family, through the eyes of the guest experience, versus the business.

User and destination archetypes allowed us to pressure-test the designs against a wide range of scenarios

People archetypes anchored design conversations in the Williams family, a fictional household covering the full spectrum of Ikon Pass holders

A personalized home, a structured network

The IA had to do two jobs at once: give every guest a personalized starting point built around their favorite destinations and trips, while keeping the full network of 50+ destinations navigable.

The biggest move was making the app behave differently inside and outside the geofence. Out of fence, it focused on discovery and trip planning. On arrival, it shifted into a mode oriented around lifts, trails, parking, food, and real-time conditions.

Three sections were standardized across every destination: a Guide for local businesses and events, a Wallet for passes and credits, and an Itinerary that centralized bookings and on-mountain logistics.

Consumer site map

The geofence in practice: Planning out of state, Pre-Arrival the night before, In-Resort on the mountain

Six rounds of testing, one product roadmap

Multiple rounds of unmoderated user testing ran throughout the project, each one validating concepts before they hardened into commitments. The results shaped the product roadmap directly, identifying high-value capabilities to prioritize and friction points that needed redesign before launch.

Prototype-based UXR gauged how actual users responded to proposed functionality. Findings were translated into concrete action items.

The Ikon Pass App reimagined

The work was structured into 11 epics that carried the team from strategy through detailed design. Launched in time for the 25/26 season, with the strategic foundation laid out here continuing to inform how the product evolves.