How a Leading Global Mountain Resort Manages Seasonal Complexity with
AI-Powered Workforce Management

About This Leading Resort Chain

Operating across the United States, Canada, and Australia, this international resort group manages over 300 distinct locations, ranging from chairlifts and lodges to restaurants, shops, and rental services. Seasonal demand surges with holidays, local events, and fresh snowfall, creating complex labor needs across the mountain. The company employs over 40,000 seasonal workers, with a strong focus on delivering a great employee experience to drive rehire rates year after year.

The Challenge

Managing labor at a mountain resort is unlike any other hospitality environment. Seasonal hiring surges, unpredictable weather, and hundreds of dispersed locations put enormous pressure on managers and systems. Without the right tools:

• Seasonal unpredictability drove rapid staffing swings across hundreds of geographically dispersed locations, with critical roles shifting throughout the day from base operations to mountaintop lodges and back to rentals and food service at close.
• Forecasting precision and labor efficiency were limited; in extreme cases, senior leaders even staffed chairlifts themselves to ensure guests continued to move.
• Large seasonal cohorts were deployed quickly across vast terrain, with managers often having limited or no face-to-face interaction with many employees during busy periods and no reliable form of standardized communication.
• Paper-driven processes and ad-hoc communication created inefficiencies and compliance risks.

The Solution

Legion WFM provided an integrated, AI-powered platform designed to address the resort’s seasonal labor challenges with core modules:

Demand Forecasting

Legion’s AI-powered forecasting automatically incorporates data such as weather patterns, holidays, and local events at each location. The self-learning models continuously improve, giving managers accurate visibility into expected demand across lifts, rental shops, restaurants, and ticket counters.

Labor Optimization

Based on demand forecasts, budget constraints, and labor models, Legion generates an optimal labor plan that identifies when and which roles are needed throughout the day. Employee skills and preferences are automatically factored in, resulting in a 96% match rate between business needs and worker preferences.

Automated Scheduling

With a single click, managers can create fully compliant schedules that align staffing levels with business requirements and employee availability. The system automatically suggests qualified employees for shifts based on compliance rules, skills, and preferences, while enabling staff to swap or claim shifts without creating overtime risk.

Frontline Communications

Clock-aware, moderated messaging ensures time-sensitive updates reach the right employees at the right time, and the Newsfeed provides a central channel for sharing important resort updates.

Strategic Insights

Strategic Insights empowers business teams to make data-driven decisions without relying on IT support. They gained instant access to out-of-the-box dashboards and hundreds of KPIs, with reports customizable to their unique needs. This visibility allowed the resort to quantify the impact of workforce management initiatives and measure performance against key objectives, driving continuous improvement.

The Results

With Legion WFM in place, the resort transformed its approach to managing tens of thousands of seasonal employees across mountainsides and international locations. The platform delivered measurable improvements in forecasting, scheduling, communication, and the employee experience:

• Scheduling Efficiency – Managers no longer spend hours building and adjusting schedules. Legion automatically generates compliant schedules that match business needs with employee preferences, allowing managers to focus on delivering a great guest experience.
• Improved Forecasting – AI-powered forecasts now factor in local events, weather, and holidays, giving the resort more accurate staffing predictions across lifts, rental shops, restaurants, and ticket counters. The continuously learning models improve visibility and help managers respond quickly to surges in demand.
• Labor Efficiency & Coverage – The optimal labor plan prioritizes critical roles at each part of the day, ensuring the right employees with the right skills are in place—from opening lifts at the base in the morning, to staffing lodges midday, to managing rentals and restaurants at close.
• Data-Driven Workforce Decisions – With Strategic Insights, resort leaders gained visibility into engagement, shift swaps, and labour variances. The insights reduced inefficiencies, strengthened the shift swap culture, and supported consistently high rehire rates.
• Communication Breakthrough – Frontline Communications provided the resort with a modern and reliable channel to connect with its dispersed seasonal workforce. Employees receive schedules, shift opportunities, and company updates directly through the app. The Newsfeed feature alone has reached engagement levels of up to 70%, reinforcing culture and sharing essential updates across the mountain.
• Employee Empowerment – Through the Legion mobile app, seasonal workers gain gig-like flexibility to view schedules, request time off, swap shifts, and communicate with managers and peers. They can set and update preferences for when and how long they want to work, as well as the type of work they want to perform. This flexibility enables them to pick up extra shifts without creating compliance risks, thereby improving satisfaction and supporting high rehire rates season after season.

Conclusion

With Legion WFM, this global mountain resort transformed its approach to managing one of the world’s most complex seasonal workforces. Accurate forecasting, automated scheduling, labor optimization, and modern frontline communication deliver consistent guest service, empower employees, and achieve measurable operational efficiency across complex environments, placing the right people in the right place at the right time.