Alterra Mountain Company
The Customer
Alterra Mountain Company, a private mountain destination community, encompasses 39 year-round destinations, including the world’s largest heli-ski operation. The company operates across recreation, hospitality, real estate, food & beverage, and retail sectors.
The Problem
Alterra was looking to launch a new product, the Ikon Pass, granting customers access to 13 of its destinations and 22 partner destinations across North America. To ensure success, Alterra required a seamless, modern digital experience for purchasing passes, integrated with its legacy systems. This solution needed to be scalable to handle high-volume demand during peak sales periods and offer flexibility for future product enhancements, all while ensuring a smooth and efficient checkout process.
The Solution
Kilterset partnered with Alterra to design and build the Ikon Pass Platform. The front end of the platform was developed using React, while Heroku powered the back end, ensuring a scalable and flexible solution. The team focused on creating a robust sales application capable of guiding customers through a complex checkout process, handling product catalogs, promotions, guest identity, insurance, and deferred payment plans. The app was designed to manage data efficiently, giving customers a seamless user experience while reducing manual inputs and enhancing speed.
The platform integrated with multiple third-party systems, including Alterra’s existing resort infrastructure. It used a variety of Heroku add-ons, such as Postgres for database management, New Relic for APM monitoring, Papertrail for logging, and Sentry for real-time error reporting, ensuring reliability and real-time oversight.
Scalability was a core component of the solution. The platform was designed to handle considerable spikes in activity, such as those during sales events or price deadlines. This was evident in the app’s ability to manage a 96% increase in orders per minute during peak sales periods.
In addition to solving the immediate challenge, Kilterset laid the foundation for future growth by building flexible APIs that extended the Ikon Pass Platform's functionality. This enabled Alterra to expand its offerings over time, including features like customer service representative portals, reservation management, address verification, and buy-now-pay-later options. The platform also supported discount programs for students, military, and healthcare workers using SheerId.
Kilterset ensured long-term scalability by migrating the platform to Microsoft Azure, where it now supports millions of users, manages extreme fluctuations in demand, and integrates with Alterra’s various businesses. For example, during the Spring Deadline of 2021, the Ikon Pass Platform handled a 100x increase in order volume over an 18-hour period, showcasing its robustness.
By collaborating closely with Alterra’s team, Kilterset did more than just deliver software; we acted as strategic advisors, shaping the platform’s evolution to support Alterra's long-term growth goals.
What the Customer Said
The team took our strategy and helped frame up the guiding principles and technical approach across the platform. They conducted themselves as if Alterra Mountain Company was their company and their primary concern. Kilterset has been more than just a delivery agent; they’ve partnered with us in a manner where they are also our trusted advisor.
– Andy Villas, VP of Digital Solutions, Alterra Mountain Company.
We’re Here to Help
If your company is facing similar challenges - whether it's building scalable platforms, integrating legacy systems, or enhancing customer experience - Kilterset can help. With our expertise in designing and delivering cutting-edge digital solutions, we’re ready to partner with you to drive success. Get in touch with us to explore how we can collaborate on your next big project.
