Due to the recession skiing occupancies fell this winter.
This is even with cracking early sales coupled with superb skiing conditions.
This reduction in snowboarders follows on from seven years of successive development in the ski industry, and the number of snowboarders fell from 1.15 million two winters ago to under a million last season.
This is partly due to vacationers giving the season a miss, while other holiday makers who’d normally take two or more ski trips, merely had the one.
A fall of 15% was experienced by the independent travel sector and a few low cost airlines cutting the no. of flights to certain destinations.
However tour operators also saw their numbers going down by around 15%.
Notwithstanding, the top six operators market share rested at just over a healthy 70% and the French Alps carried on as the most visited skiing destination with around 37% of the market.
This meant that several operators cut down the amount of luxury catered chalets they rent this coming season.
Catered chalets will surely see a a drop in numbers in light of the fact that a catered ski chalet incurs more costs with regards to chefs and rent when it is unoccupied.
It’s unlikely therefore that we will find the special offers that were around last winter.
And costs are probably going to to augment, costs are unlikely to go up much.
The 2009/10 season doubtless presents grievous problems for an industry which is impacted by the effects of the down turn, weakness of the pound against the euro, soaring fuel costs as well as large fixed operating costs for luxury chalet companies.
This season skiers will become more cost aware, this will contribute to an about face of the trends of the last years which saw a development in independent travel.
