Because of the Recession Several Ski Companies Will Be Slashing Their Number of Catered Chalets
In light of the credit crunch ski occupancies fell last skiing season.
This is even with strong pre season reservations and excellent skiing conditions.
This reduction in numbers comes after five seasons of successive growth within the snowboarding industry, and the number of holidaymakers decreased from 1.05 million in 2008 to less than a million last winter.
Perhaps due to skiers giving their annual skiing trip a miss, whilst other snowboarders who would normally take two skiing vacations, just had the one.
Sales for the independent travel sector fell by 15% and some budget airlines slashing the no. of routes to some destinations.
Moreover tour operators witnessed the reservations going down by about the same amount for ski holidays Europe.
Even so, the top six tour operators share continued at just over a healthy 70% and the Alps in France continued to remain the favourite skiing destination with around 37% of the skiing market.
Because of this several major ski operators slashed the total number of luxury chalets they lease this coming season.
Catered ski chalets will witness a reduction in skiers as a catered ski chalet costs more with regards to employees and lease when it is not occupied.
It is unlikely therefore that we shall see the special offers which were on the market last winter.
And costs are probably going to to rise, costs are unlikely to rise a lot.
The 2009/10 season presents real problems for an industry that is influenced by the results of the down turn, weakness of the pound against the euro, high costs of fuel on top of high fixed running costs for snowboarding holiday companies.
Next year snowboarders will be more and more cost aware, this shall contribute to a reversion of the recent years that saw a growth in the independent travel sector.
Large scale skiing operators might well win back some of the customers lost to the independent travel sector if they are able to use their buying power to wrangle reduced costs and pass this to consumers as irresistible deals.
