Zaui Customer Story: IceWalks on What 40 Years on a Glacier Teaches You About Business

IceWalks is a unique glacier-tour operator based in Jasper National Park, guiding visitors onto Alberta’s Athabasca Glacier. Nestled in the Columbia Icefield, “the most popular stop along the Icefields Parkway”, they offer half-day and full-day hikes that let anyone explore a living glacier. IceWalks’ story spans four decades: it began as a Parks Canada interpretive program in 1985 and evolved into a private business built on hard work, passionate guiding, and word-of-mouth. In this customer success story, IceWalks owner Corin Lohmann shares how he went from guide to owner (just before the pandemic!), how the tours themselves educate people about climate change, and how Zaui’s reservation technology has helped the business stay lean and flexible. Along the way, we even learn that NASA once called IceWalks to test a space‑exploration robot on the glacier, talk about a unique “tour client”!

NASA Meets IceWalks

In the summer of 2022 NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) brought a prototype “snake” robot called EELS to the Athabasca Glacier. Designed to explore the icy crust of worlds like Saturn’s Enceladus, the autonomous EELS robot had its sensors lowered into a vertical ice shaft on Athabasca Glacier during field tests. (EELS stands for “Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor”, no kidding!) This out‑of‑this‑world project highlights how unique the IceWalks terrain is. The NASA engineers needed a safe, accessible glacier to simulate those alien conditions on Earth. Corin laughs that getting that call was “by far the coolest call I’ve ever had”, hearing “Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA” on the other end of the line was surreal. The glacier isn’t only cool for robots: it gives IceWalks guides a front-row seat to science in action, underscoring their message that this is a special environment worth exploring and protecting.

IceWalks’ 40-Year Journey

Since 1985, Athabasca IceWalks has been the guided glacier-hike operator in the Canadian Rockies. Founder Peter Lemieux was an ACMG-certified mountain guide who began running hikes as part of a Parks Canada education program. When park funding ran out in the mid‑1980s, Peter took it over as a private business. In those early days, there were no websites or cell phones, guests simply met at a trailhead and hoped for the best. Bookings came through a single office in Jasper or even by showing up, and most marketing was word-of-mouth or local print ads. Over the years, IceWalks grew slowly; at one point Peter ran it mostly by himself with a handful of guides, relying on paper bookings and face-to-face sales. As their own case study notes, “most visitors discovered IceWalks via word of mouth and print advertising distributed to local businesses”.

Corin Lohmann joined the team in 2013 as a seasonal glacier guide. He describes those years as busy, every summer the guides would sell out on hikes. Watching the business tick along, Corin realized the opportunity it presented: it was a niche tour in a unique location, with steady demand but a very lean operation. He saved up, and when Peter began looking for an exit in 2019 he proposed buying the company in stages. Corin took ownership in 2020, right before the pandemic lockdowns. It was a bold move, one he laughs was a bit like betting the house on a “dying glacier” - but one made with eyes wide open. As the Zaui’s previous case study with IceWalks notes, Peter “decided to pass the torch to co-guide Corin Lohmann to usher in Athabasca IceWalks’s next chapter”.

Scaling in a Pandemic

Almost immediately after Corin took over, COVID-19 hit. Like all tour operators, IceWalks saw bookings plummet, Corin estimates up to a 90% drop in summer 2020. But oddly, the timing turned out to have a silver lining. With fewer guests on the glacier, Corin suddenly had breathing room to focus on the business side. He took the downtime to learn the ropes of operations, master the Zaui booking system, and improve marketing and tour products. 

“The pandemic downtime proved to be an optimal period to review its digital presence, tour offerings, and sales and marketing initiatives”.

Crucially, IceWalks had already been on Zaui’s platform for years. Peter had implemented Zaui’s reservation software back in 2011, part of an early digital transformation. By 2020 all bookings went through Zaui’s system (online and via agents), so when international travel shut down and the company had only local Canadian customers left, the business could scale its staffing accordingly. The online bookings and agent portals meant IceWalks never needed a big call center to keep up, one person at a computer could manage hundreds of reservations. This lean setup was a lifesaver during the downturn. Corin notes that thanks to Zaui they could scale guide staffing on demand and still break even (with some help from government subsidies). In his words, having “the booking system” meant he could handle all scheduling, payments, and communications without a whole new team.

Today, as tourism rebounds, IceWalks is enjoying record seasons, but the lessons remain the same: stay flexible, keep overhead low, and let technology work in your favor. With Zaui, IceWalks always has full visibility into every tour. For example, the software provides manifests and schedules at a glance, so guides see exactly who’s on each hike and when. No Excel spreadsheets and sticky notes. And because glacier tours can be canceled by weather (or sudden ice movement!), Zaui’s online booking engine makes it easy to notify guests and rebook tours on the fly. Agents likewise love it: with an affiliate portal they can book on behalf of customers without phone tag. In short, Zaui helped turn IceWalks from a pen‑and‑paper outfit into a modern reservation business, without losing the personalized service that makes it special.

Inside an Athabasca Glacier Tour

What do guests actually do on an IceWalks tour? No mountaineering experience is needed, the Athabasca Glacier slopes gently out of the valley. After an easy 1-hour hike up a trail, hikers reach the snout of the glacier. Guides equip everyone with ice crampons and explain safety protocols, then lead the group into a world of blue ice. Along the way you’ll see:

• Crevasses and moulins: Tiny streams of water cascade down vertical shafts (moulins) in the ice, sometimes 30 meters deep. Guests peer into these holes and marvel at the glacier’s depth.
  
• Ice pillars and seracs: As you walk farther in, you encounter towering columns and walls of ice, some as tall as trees, formed by shifting ice. Often guides gather guests in a natural ice amphitheater for a lunch or guided talk.
  
• Glacial vistas: Climbing a short ice ramp leads to a high point overlooking the entire valley. From there you see the glacier stretch back up to the Columbia Icefields and the continental divide. On a clear day you can see hundreds of meters of ice above and miles of rocky moraine below.
  

These hikes last 3 - 6 hours (half-day or full-day tours) and cover roughly 5 - 9 km on ice and rock. Throughout the journey, IceWalks’ certified guides tell stories about the glacier’s geology, ecology, and history. By the end of the hike, even first-time glacier trekkers feel like explorers who earned every view.

Throughout the season IceWalks runs multiple departures daily to meet demand. Even at peak business,  8,000 - 9,000 visitors per year pre-pandemic, the tours remain small and personal (only a few hikers per guide). That personal touch is part of the magic; it also plays into their marketing. Because IceWalks traditionally had no big ad budget, nearly all new guests came via referrals. Visitors took photos on the ice and told friends, and the company grew one happy hiker at a time. Zaui helped by making the booking process smooth, but the core experience, walking on real glacier ice sells itself.

Witnessing Climate Change

One of the most powerful lessons of an IceWalks tour is seeing climate change in action. Guides openly discuss how Athabasca Glacier is a shrinking one. In fact, visitors who return a few years later often barely recognize the landscape. Small signs along the trail mark where the glacier’s snout used to be in the past: for example, “Glacier’s edge in 1985” stands well uphill of today’s ice. According to NASA, these changes are dramatic: in the past 125 years the Athabasca Glacier has lost half its volume and retreated more than 1.5 kilometers. IceWalks confirms this firsthand, since Corin started in 2013, the glacier has pulled back another 400 meters. A heatwave in 2021 melted roughly three seasons’ worth of ice in one summer, shrinking the tourable glacier noticeably by August.

Because of this, IceWalks doesn’t shy away from the climate conversation. They point out that every glacier tour is finite: Someday the ice will recede too far up-valley. But instead of avoiding the topic, guides use it to deepen the guest experience. Seeing a moulin or an exposed rock bed on Athabasca has a real impact. Guests often say, “This is ice that was under my feet 20 years ago, we’re standing in climate history.” This concrete, non-abstract lesson resonates. Many hikers ask, “What can we do?” after learning the facts. That connection, turning awe at ice into awareness of warming, is something no brochure or lecture hall can replicate. It has become a subtle value-add: tourists get not just a hike, but a memorable insight into our planet’s changes.

Embracing Technology and the Future

Even as climate raises questions, IceWalks is optimistic about the future. Corin believes the Columbia Icefield will remain a destination for years to come, even if the glacier foot retreats. He’s already developing new products, for example, guided mountain-climb tours (via ferrata style) and interpretive hikes to the glacier’s new moraines. The goal is to keep showing people this spectacular landscape, whether it’s on ice or on the rocks above it.

On the technology side, Corin’s philosophy is simple: “My core job is taking people on the glacier. I leave the tech to Zaui.” Unlike Silicon Valley startups, IceWalks isn’t looking to build its own app. Instead, it relies on Zaui’s booking platform (and the smart tools Zaui is adding) to run the business. Recently Zaui announced Nera - Zaui’s powerful AI Insights, a background tool that crunches an operator’s booking data to suggest smarter pricing and inventory choices. Nera analyzes booking patterns and recommends optimized price adjustments and capacity additions to help you capture more revenue. In practice this means if a particular tour consistently sells out or stays half-full, Nera will flag it and even suggest changing the price or adding more departure slots. IceWalks plans to use these insights so Corin and his team can make data-driven decisions (for example, tweaking prices on evenings or days when demand is high).

Looking ahead, IceWalks and Zaui are aligned: the guides can focus on real-world adventures while the software “quietly works behind the scenes.” Corin quips that he still just asks Siri random questions but he’s glad to know Zaui is investing “very heavily” in AI. Future features (like dynamic pricing based on demand trends) will arrive without IceWalks having to lift a finger. This synergy, local expertise meeting smart technology   is exactly why the company has stayed competitive for 40 years.

Key Takeaways

• Unique Product, Powerful Story: IceWalks succeeded by specializing in a truly one-of-a-kind tour (glacier hiking) and sharing that wonder with guests. They let the experience speak for itself and encourage guests to spread the word.
  
• Lean Operations with Technology: From day one IceWalks ran lean and continues to do so. A small team of guides handles bookings, logistics, and guiding. By adopting Zaui’s reservation system early on, they automated scheduling, manifest generation, payments, and agent bookings. This meant one employee could manage thousands of bookings, and no lead was lost during busy periods or slowdowns.
  
• Flexibility Pays Off: The pandemic underscored the need to adapt. IceWalks used downtime to improve its online presence and offerings, ultimately reaching new local markets. This flexibility (shifting focus from international to domestic customers) was possible because their core operations (booking & scheduling) were already digital.
  
• Add Meaning, Not Just a Checkmark: IceWalks doesn’t shy away from talking about glacier retreat; instead they turn it into a memorable part of the tour. Tourism businesses can similarly incorporate natural or historical education to enrich the guest experience.
  
• Partner, Don’t Reinvent: Corin’s approach to tech is instructive. He didn’t try to write his own software; he partnered with Zaui and now leverages its ongoing investments (like Nera AI) for free. This lets him stay focused on guiding while still getting the benefits of data-driven insights.
  

In short, IceWalks’ success is a lesson for any tour operator: double down on what makes you special, lean on technology to handle the details, and be ready to pivot when the unexpected (like a pandemic or a thinning glacier) comes along. The glacier may be receding, but for IceWalks the future looks as bright as the blue ice underfoot.

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