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This sounds like an elegantly simple solution.

This also brings back fond memories working for a larger resort and my team building an integrated lift status system. Simple API on top of a relational database, easy to use web application for lift operations to update lift status in realtime, integrated PDF generation to print reports for numerous front-desks (think all the main lodges, hotels, and businesses in town to receive and print). The big win was a large number of large plasma screens running out lift status flash application in various lodges with long runs of HDMI to proxy servers all getting pub/sub realtime status updates. The Flash application had continuous polling via AMF to our proxy servers with a cache layer, etc. and it was pretty well received by guests. We also had the same API support all mobile apps at the time. The big customer-loving feature was getting alerts when a lift was about to open on a bluebird powder day and get that to them in near realtime often before many of the "lifties" knew.