The evolution of snowsports has dramatically changed sliding techniques, enabling higher velocities, and providing less safety. In addition, due to major changes in lifestyle with increasingly longer periods of physical inactivity, unhealthy nutrition, and other health risk factors, we are encountering more and more snowsports participants with diminished motor and functional skills, a higher incidence of chronic and acute injuries, and different expectations. Thus, the general interest in outdoor activities is decreasing, especially when more funds have to be raised for travel, equipment, lift passes, etc. for this purpose.
For the above reasons, focusing our professional efforts on finding new opportunities for incentives and raising awareness of the importance and value of physical active in nature is in all our interests. The development of services that appeal to individuals, families and groups and allow them to enter the world of snow sports in a quick, easy and fun way will help to address the above challenges. It is essential to improve the guest experience through adapting and improving procedures, tools, and teaching methods to inspire people to engage in physical activity, generally, and snowsports, specifically, as lifelong activities. Developments in globalized alpine winter tourism with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds make it necessary for snowsports instructors to expand their knowledge and competence. Further, recent experience with the pandemic COVID -19 prompts us to look for new approaches based on mobile platforms and multimedia technologies. How can the scientific work and methodology based on it help to attract more children to winter sports so that parents and families are satisfied? This keynote presents a European collaborative project addressing these challenges across eight countries using the following acronym SKI EASY:
E – Promoting education in and through sport with special emphasis on developing the skills and competencies of snowsports instructors and learners; Enriching (self)employment opportunities for professional and dual career development; Teaching module – SKI EASY Certificate;
A – Accessible learning and promoting participation in outdoor sports; Reaching the population of deprived children and enabling snow sports experiences with the help of local communities and volunteers;
S – Simple communication: implementing a 5-steps model for teaching skiing (ski alphabet, dictionaries and manuals) to beginner skiers in different world languages to facilitate interaction in teaching skiing;
Y-youthful: a state-of-the-art IT -driven approach to teaching (ICT applications – SKIEASY MOBAPP for smartphones in different world languages and multimedia technologies to overcome language and cultural barriers).