Outdooractive Integrates Difficulty Descriptions for Safer Outdoor Experiences
Outdooractive, the leading digital platform in outdoor tourism, is launching a new difficulty rating initiative to further enhance the safety of outdoor enthusiasts. The improved difficulty rating system provides clear descriptions, making it easier and safer for users to find a suitable route outdoors.
Every route requires an assessment of its difficulty and terrain during the planning process. However, providing an objective evaluation is easier said than done. Everyone’s judgment is influenced by their own experience, physical fitness, and similar indicators. In the worst-case scenario, misjudgments can lead to life-threatening situations in outdoor environments. Outdooractive is well known in the industry for leading the way in technical developments of navigation products and, as the initiator of numerous projects, setting the foundation for the introduction of international standards.
“It is important to us that even less experienced outdoor sportspeople correctly interpret the significance of general and technical difficulty levels of a route so they can make informed and safe decisions. To this end, we have integrated several standardized difficulty scales into the platform and assigned them to the respective activities,” explains Daniel Gadner, Team Lead Product Management at Outdooractive, about the platform’s new safety feature. “Additionally, there are clear and concise descriptions of the difficulty levels,” Gadner adds.The next step is to automatically calculate and display the difficulty rating during individual route planning. In order for as many users as possible to benefit from this innovation and move more safely in outdoor environments, the safety feature is already included in the Basic Version, currently available on the web (as of September 2024).
Key updates include:
- Adoption of official trail markings to ensure consistency and clarity in difficulty ratings.
- Implementation of the renowned SAC hiking scale for classifying trails, providing accurate information on technical difficulty.
- Visualization of routes for various activities, including via ferratas, secured sections, and specialized difficulty scales for alpine routes, climbing, and mountain biking.
- Scalable map for a detailed view of routes.
- Comprehensive explanations of difficulty scales for user-friendly application by outdoor enthusiasts of all levels.
For further information, please contact:
Outdooractive AG
Email: presse@outdooractive.com
Weiterführende Links:
How do I correctly rate the difficulty of a route?: https://www.outdooractive.com/de/knowledgepage/wie-bewerte-ich-touren-richtig-/54282832
Outdooractive Plattform: https://www.outdooractive.com
Outdooractive Business: https://business.outdooractive.com/
About Outdooractive
For 30 years, Outdooractive has been helping outdoor enthusiasts enjoy their experiences in nature safely and sustainably with its comprehensive web and app features and unique routing technology – from ambitious hikers to hobby skiers, weekend mountain bikers to professional riders. Outdooractive connects a worldwide community and collaborates with nearly 6,000 industry experts such as tourism organizations, guides, or trail managers to provide reliable tour suggestions and make officially recognized content easily accessible. For DMOs and other actors in tourism, Outdooractive offers a unique full-service SaaS product for effective, digital destination marketing to directly network all stakeholders down to the individual guest. CEO and founder Hartmut Wimmer is the initiator of numerous projects and a member of various alliances to create international standards in tourism and enable the easy exchange of high-quality data.