532Because of the Global Recession a Lot of Snowboarding Companies Will Be Slashing Their Number of Catered Chalets
posted on August 2nd, 2009
In part due to the credit crunch snowboarding occupancies went down last season.
This is despite of acceptable pre season sales along with superb snow conditions.
These drops in holidaymakers follows on from 6 winters of continuous growth within the snowboarding industry, and the number of snowboarders dropped from 1 million two winters ago to 900000 last winter.
Perhaps due to vacationers giving the season a miss, and additional holiday makers who’d normally take two or more snowboarding holidays, only had one.
The independent travel sector fell by 15% and some budget airlines slashing the number of routes to certain cities.
Some tour operators witnessed their sales falling by 15%.
All the same, the top six companies market share stayed at 70% and the French Alps continued to remain the favorite ski destination with around 37% of ski holidays.
Because of this several large operators cut the total number of ski chalets they lease this winter.
Catered ski chalets especially will witness a a drop in holiday makers as a catered ski chalet incurs more costs in terms of hosts and chefs and lease when it is unoccupied.
Therefore it is unlikely that we shall find the special offers that were available last year.
Costs are probably going to to go up, costs probably won’t increase much.
This winter beyond any doubt poses real issues for the snowboarding industry which is affected by the effects of the depression, weakness of the pound, soaring costs of fuel and high fixed running costs for ski holiday companies.
