Parents take their child skiing and buy one junior, and one senior daily pass, and then both parents take turns skiing with the child. Such practice was the norm at the Kranjska Gora ski resort, but things are about to change.

Dispossessions of ski passes for violations of non-transferability was not well accepted by the Slovenians, and frequent online complaints and comments encouraged us to take a closer look at the supervision of non-transferability of ski passes and established whether the supervision really is disputable.

Rigorous surveillance for the last three years
"The frequency of resale of ski passes in the past seasons, and the well-known fact that in Kranjska Gora four or five people can easily ski using one ski pass only encouraged our owners to act and regulate the situation," Klavdija Gomboc from RTC Žičnice Kranjska Gora explained. The intensive surveillance was introduced in the season of 2014/2015, when Axess, the international ski system of sale and supervision of ski passes used at the most foreign ski resorts, was introduced.
Most of violators come from Slovenia
Due to video surveillance during three seasons more than 2000 ski passes were dispossessed, Gomboč explained. She believes that buyers of ski passes are slowly learning that rules have to be obeyed also on Slovenian ski slopes, and not only abroad. "98% of skiers obey the rules, while 2% of them still try to abuse the system," she claims.

"And all of them are Slovenian consumers. Foreigners, who present up to 40% or our visitors, know that abroad exchanging ski passes is a criminal offence, and that in such cases the punishment in not only dispossession of the pass, but also a fine, and that the Police can be involved if necessary," Gomboc put a finger on domestic skiers.
Types of supervision at other ski resorts
Non-transferability of ski passes is not only a characteristic of the Kranjska Gora ski resort, so we checked the situation at other larger ski resorts.
Vogel chose the same system employed at Kranjska Gora. "The surveillance of ski passes was established in the season of 2014/2015, with the exchange of ski system for sale and surveillance of ski passes Axess. This system allows better control of ski passes which are non-transferable, with the exception of transferable season and annual passes," they explained. In the last season, some 40 ski passes were dispossessed.

Video surveillance is maintained by two cameras which monitor the owners of ski passes, but the surveillance has other purpose as well, i.e. to assure safety of people and property. Video surveillance is, according to them, performed only by "persons authorised by the president of the managing board, and who had signed a statement committing them to safeguard the recordings as secret, and who are aware of the consequences of misuse of video recordings".

"The surveillance is performed by an operator who verifies the picture of the pass owner, and is in charge of correct procedure in case misuse of a ski pass is established. In compliance with the Article 74 of the Act on Protection of Personal Data the company had also issued Rules on Video Surveillance, describing the measures to be taken in cases of incorrect implementation," representatives of the Vogel ski resorts explained.

"We don't have a video surveillance system for violation non-transferable ski passes. But it is possible to check ski passes using a computer when boarding the circular cable car - when a pass is inserted into the pass scanner, the operator sees data on pass, i.e. its holder on the computer monitor, and during this winter season it resulted in dispossession of several ski passes," was explained by a representative of ski resort at Pohorje above Maribor.

"We don't have video surveillance at the Rogla ski resort. We do employ the required number of supervisors in compliance with the Ski Safety Act, and they are authorized also for dispossession of ski passes based on violations they notice or deal with," explained the representatives of the Rogla ski resort.

Our question addressed to the representatives of the Krvavec ski resort remained unanswered.