The Dart Maker Blog

Due to the down turn ski occupancies fell this season.

Notwithstanding very good pre season reservations coupled with fantastic snow.

This reduction in skiers follows on from 6 years of successive growth in the skiing industry, and the numbers contracted from 1.1 million two seasons ago to 950000 last winter.

Partly due to vacationers giving the season a miss, whilst additional vacationers who’d ordinarily take 2 snowboarding vacations, merely had the one.

Sales for the independent travel sector fell by 15% with a handful low cost airlines slashing the number of airplanes to several airports.

Some tour operators also saw their numbers going down by around 15%.

Still, the top tour operators share stayed at 73% and the French Alps continued to remain the favourite ski destination with about 37% of the English ski market.

This meant that a lot of tour operators cut the no. of luxury ski chalets they operate this coming winter.

Luxury catered chalets especially will witness a a drop in skiers as a luxury catered chalet incurs more costs with regards to chalet hosts and rent if it is unsold.

It seems unlikely that we will see the type of special offers which were available last season.

And prices are expected to rise, costs are unlikely to increase substantially.

The 2009/10 season beyond any doubt poses real issues for the ski industry which is affected by the results of the credit crunch, fall in the value of the pound, higher fuel costs and large fixed costs for snowboarding holiday companies.

This year snowboarders will be increasingly cost aware, this shall add to a turnabout of the last years which saw a growth in the independent travel sector.

[Large-scale operators could foreseeable claw back the ground lost to the independent sector if they utilise their buying-power to negotiate better prices and pass this to customers as irresistible deals.