Transmission Wire

In light of the recession snowboarding sales dropped last ski season.

Even with strong early bookings along with superb skiing conditions.

This reduction in skiers follows on from six seasons of successive growth within the snowboarding industry, and the number of holidaymakers went down from 1 million in 2008 to 950000 last winter.

This is in part due to holiday makers giving the season a miss, whilst additional vacationers who’d commonly take two or more ski trips, just had the one.

A fall of 15% was felt by the independent travel sector and a handful budget airlines slashing the no. of their routes to some cities.

Tour operators saw their sales reducing by 15%.

Still, the top 6 tour operators share of the market stayed at 70% and France carried on as the favourite destination with nearly 40% of the market.

This meant that several operators cut the no. of luxury catered chalets they lease this year.

Catered ski chalets will surely witness a reduction in vacationers in light of the fact that a catered ski chalet costs the operator more with regards to hosts and chefs and rent if it is not sold.

It seems unlikely that we shall witness the skiing holiday deals that were on the market this winter.

Although costs are probably going to to increase, costs are unlikely to go up substantially.

The next winter presents serious problems for an industry that is affected by the effects of the depression, exchange rate, soaring costs of fuel on top of large fixed operating costs for ski holiday companies.

This winter snowboarders will be increasingly price sensitive, this will contribute to a reversal of recent trends which saw a increase in the skiing industry.