The Context Machine

Because of the depression ski occupancies decreased this season.

This is even with cracking early reservations along with great snow conditions.

These drops in skiers follows seven seasons of successive growth in the ski industry, and the numbers dropped from 1.05 million two years ago to less than a million last winter.

This is in part due to vacationers giving the season a miss, and other snowboarders who would normally take two ski holidays, merely had the one.

The independent travel sector fell by 15% and numerous low cost airlines slashing the no. of routes to certain destinations.

Moreover tour operators also saw their bookings going down by about the same amount.

Still, the leading companies market share rested at a healthy 73% and France remained the most popular ski destination with about 37% of holidays.

Due to this a lot of operators lowered the total number of luxury ski chalets they rent this winter.

Catered chalets especially will witness a reduction in skiers because a catered skiing chalet costs more with regards to chalet hosts and rent if it is unsold.

It remains unlikely that we will see the special offers which were around last year.

Whilst prices are likely to increase, they probably won’t increase substantially.

The next season beyond any doubt poses real challenges for an industry that is affected by the consequences of the credit crunch, weakness of the pound against the euro, higher costs of fuel on top of large fixed running costs for ski businesses.