Alex Douglas is on a mission. The rental manager at Mount Seymour, B.C., wants to provide the best possible experience. So he’s creating an Internet discussion group to identify and disseminate best practices, as he explained to a group of interested rental operators and suppliers at the Rental Roundtable, held in the SAM-sponsored Rental World at the SIA ‘06 Snowsports Trade Show Jan. 23.

His Yahoo! Groups discussion site, ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/skirentalshopnetwork, launched just prior to the show and, given the number of questions raised during the Roundtable, traffic should pick up quickly.

The Roundtable drew a wide range of rental operators and suppliers to meet and compare notes. Dave Grenier, rental guru for Peak Resorts, was amused to hear one rental operator declare he gets just three years’ use out of rental sets before the bases and edges are worn down from repeated tunings. “There are some rental operators who keep their rental skis for several years and never tune them,” Grenier told SAM after the event.

Several shops bemoaned the difficulties of implementing the 2004 settings changes in the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Snow Skiing standard for juniors 9 and under. More and more kids in this age group are wearing large boots which, combined with the decreased DIN settings required by ASTM, leads to complaints that bindings release too easily. Christoph Deszecker, rental director for Tyrolia worldwide, said that perhaps 20 percent of 8-year-old boys and 50 percent of 9-year-old boys are affected by the change.

Another ASTM issue is the settings chart itself. Combined with the lengthy rental form shops use, there’s plenty of room for customers and technicians to make mistakes. There was general agreement that managers should inspect the forms as frequently as possible, to make sure both customers and staff are completing the process correctly.

Part of the solution to ASTM-related concerns is for more rental operators to get involved in ASTM, said Mike Owen, an independent rental operator with five shops serving resorts in Virginia and West Virginia. There are only a few rental members currently, he said, amid many members from the general public and from suppliers.

Training is another concern. Douglas recalled that training used to be done by experts provided by suppliers or the Ski and Snowboard Mechanics Workshops and its predecessors. Increasingly, training has moved to a video/ workbook format. This leaves hands-on training to the shop’s own veteran mechanics, who already have full schedules. “Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far away from [hands-on] training, and it will move back,” Douglas told SAM later. “We need help getting our jobs done correctly.” The Mechanics Workshops are one obvious solution.

While discussing procedures, several operators said they don’t like to use correction factors for rental bindings. It’s possible for the technician to miss the correction indication (typically a sticker affixed to the toepiece), or for the correction indication to be missing. Most in attendance agreed that the correction factor complicates a process that everyone is trying to simplify and speed up.

Deszecker noted that, in Europe, the standard of care at rental is in some ways more advanced than in North America. Even mid-sized shops in Europe are likely to use rental management software, which can track things like correction factors and account for them in determining the settings for each user. And most shops in Europe tune rental skis more regularly.

Even so, everyone agreed that providing a good experience for the guest is the ultimate goal. With so many questions, and so few answers about how to achieve that, attendees discussed where best to organize a rental discussion forum. For the moment, Douglas’ Yahoo! discussion group is the most logical site.