July
2009
In Part Due to the Depression a Lot of Ski Businesses Will Be Cutting Their Number of Catered Chalets
In light of the depression snowboarding occupancies lowered last winter.
Notwithstanding very good early season reservations and first class snow conditions.
These drops in holidaymakers follows on from seven years of successive growth in the skiing industry, and the number of vacationers decreased from one million in 2008/9 to under a million last winter.
Perhaps due to skiers giving their annual snowboarding holiday a miss, and additional snowboarders who’d typically have two ski breaks, only had one.
The independent travel sector fell by 15% with some low priced airlines cutting the amount of airplanes to several cities.
Some tour operators also saw the reservations falling by 15%.
Nonetheless, the top operators share stayed at just over 70% and the Alps in France continued to remain the favourite destination with about 37% of the market.
Because of this several tour operators cut down the amount of skiing chalets they lease this coming winter.
Luxury catered chalets especially will see a reduction in vacationers due to the fact that a catered ski chalet incurs more costs in terms of staff and lease when it is empty.
It remains unlikely that we shall benefit from the type of special offers which were up for grabs this year.
Costs are probably going to to increase, costs probably won’t go up much.
The 2009/10 winter without doubt presents grave issues for an industry which is touched by by the consequences of the credit crunch, exchange rate, higher fuel costs as well as large fixed operating costs for snowboarding businesses.
Next winter snowboarders will be more and more price sensitive, which will add to a turnabout of the last years which witnessed a growth in the independent travel sector.
