7 Questions & Answers about the Bike Kingdom Success Story

The third season of Bike Kingdom started in June. Looking back, what are the biggest highlights for you so far?

A moment lasting in my memory is from the very beginning: the moment when I was standing on Rothorn with Simon Smit from the Creative Intelligence Society agency and the name "Bike Kingdom" popped into my mind the first time. Bike Kingdom - a kingdom for mountain bikers. At that moment the penny dropped and the founding idea for the Bike Kingdom was born.

Then, of course, the start of the first season, when we could see that Bike Kingdom and the app were well received and appreciated by guests. From the little kids just getting started on their bikes to the big pros, we got positive feedback from everyone.

It was also nice to see that the service providers in the region could identify with the Bike Kingdom brand and began to create creative offers based on our central idea. One example is the Valbella Resort, which took up the theme with the slogan "Every Kingdom needs a Castle". It’s nice to see that Chur Brambrüesch also adopted the theme with the Alpenbikepark and identifies itself as part of the Bike Kingdom. We basically provided the initial spark and the ecosystem continued to develop with it as a result.

With the Tourism Innovations Award milestone, the Marketing Excellence Award and the Best of Swiss Apps Award, Bike Kingdom received several awards. What makes the Bike Kingdom so unique & innovative for you?

Bike Kingdom redefines the customer experience. We have created a brand that speaks directly to its target group and focuses entirely on biking as a sport. That is certainly unique. It is a 360 degree experience and not "just" an app with cool features. Bike Kingdom is an on- and offline experience that inspires guests, live on site and on a digital level. We have created an experience that encompasses a wide range of touchpoints, from the app experience itself to the design of the trails in the region. In this way, we have managed to turn guests into real fans. We even have this confirmed in the form of fan-mail from kids.

With the Bike Kingdom app and Omni Suite in the background, mountain biking experiences in Lenzerheide expand to include a virtual level. What do you see as the biggest advantages of this digital ecosystem for Lenzerheide as a destination?

It was important for us to digitalise customer relationships. Thanks to Omni technology from inside labs, we can see how and where guests move around the destination, what their interests are and what type of mountain biker they are, which are extremely valuable insights for us. This creates the basis for using the potential of this information in a more optimised way in the future. The digital ecosystem offers great advantages from the perspective of guest loyalty and retention. Thanks to data generated by the app, we can recognise and reward loyal guests.

The ecosystem also offers the possibility to easily integrate partners and make them part of Bike Kingdom. Through this integration, we can offer our service providers a new digital sales platform and worth together to expand it together. I see a lot of potential here for the coming months and years.

Currently, we mainly sell Bike Kingdom merchandise and gadgets via the app as a digital sales channel. What is clearly still missing at the moment are mountain lift tickets. My vision is that the guest in Zurich can swipe on the Bike Kingdom app once when getting on the train and once at the end of the biking day and be charged the best rate for everything. That would be the best convenience for the guest. Pain points like buying tickets at the ticket office or tedious pre-ordering should be eliminated wherever possible. The guest should also have the assurance that he or she will be charged the best rate.

How has the relationship with the guest changed through Bike Kingdom as a digital platform?

We have been able to significantly intensify the relationship with the guest thanks to the new digital platform. For example, gamification elements such as leaderboards or the newly introduced Follow-Function enable a closer and more frequent exchange with visitors.

The entire handling and community management of the campaigns on the app takes up a lot of resources, but we see great potential and advantages in using the information that we gather through the intensified digital guest relationship. For us, it’s also a strategically important field of experimentation for the future of customer relationships. We can use information to redefine appreciation and create magic moments for guests.

An example regarding guest relations is certainly the idea of the Top Riders Club. Only the top 10 most active can join the Top Riders Club and are granted access to exclusive offers and services the following year. This allows us to specially reward particularly active bikers and show appreciation for their high level of loyalty and activity. Many of these "Club Members" become ambassadors who proudly represent the Bike Kingdom to the entire biker community.

According to a Horvath Studylast year, the decade of ecosystems has arrived. In the Ecosystem Study 2021, the development of business ecosystems is described as the "new gold of economy". The Bike Kingdom case is listed as a best practice example from tourism: Is Bike Kingdom a pioneering project for modern tourism ecosystems?

I think Bike Kingdom is definitely an exciting showcase for a lot of people and has certainly attracted a lot of attention within the industry. The digitalisation of destinations only works together. When planning and implementing digitalisation projects in tourism, it is crucial, in my opinion, to work collaboratively in joint ecosystems with partners inside and outside the destination.

The important thing for me here is the differentiation and creation of real USPs through strongly created content. In other words, how are the newly created channels played with and used? We were able to present this and its something that can’t be copied one-to-one.

The tourism ecosystem naturally also includes the guests. The gamification aspect plays a central role in the Bike Kingdom app. How do you see the importance of gamification and community in the design of modern guest experiences? How does the Bike Kingdom incentivise visitors?

Examples like the Strava App show, in comparison, what gamification dynamics can be adopted. We try to use this for our guests and the destinations. Thanks to gamification, we can create incentives for our guests to ride more often and for longer periods within the Bike Kingdom. The integration of partners who sponsor prizes such as new mountain bikes especially increase the attractiveness of challenges and this benefits everyone involved. The partners get an attractive marketing platform to present their offers to the mountain bike community. The destination benefits from the fact that the challenges are perceived more attractively by the guests and therefore reach a higher guest engagement via the platform.

For us, gamification is an important tool for visitor guidance too. Especially during the Corona period, it was important for us to guide the flow of visitors as well as possible to support avoiding large crowds. With challenges & quests via the app, we can set incentives, optimise visitor guidance and in turn, better distribute guests among more than 900 km of bike trails in the region.

To end, a little outlook: What are you most looking forward to this season and what do you see as the long-term vision for Bike Kingdom?

This season I am really looking forward to the introduction of the Top Riders Club through which we can reward particularly loyal guests. Then, of course, the Follow Function where I can follow other bikers and better compare myself with them. As an app user, I am always up to date on where my friends are in the Bike Kingdom and who has already ridden how many kilometers etc. during the season.

In the long term, I see the further developments and expansions of the commerce platform via our own marketplace as a central point. We would like to play out personalised offers in a much more targeted manner and exploit the digital possibilities of linking mountain lift tickets, overnight stays or other service offers. So far, we are only using a fraction of the potential there. We have to show our partners and service providers the added value and then implement it together with them.

Would you like to learn more about the Bike Kingdom Case?? We summarised the most important key data and figures for you in our Case Study.

Do you have any questions about the conversation with Marc Schlüssel or about digitalisation in tourism? Then write to us at talkto@insidelabs.tech . We look forward to hearing from you.

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