Thanks to the global recession ski occupancies fell last snowboarding season.
Notwithstanding acceptable pre season sales and brilliant skiing.
This reduction in holidaymakers follows on from five seasons of successive growth within the snowboarding industry, and the number of snowboarders shrunk from 1 million two years ago to 950000 last year.
Partly due to skiers giving the season a miss, while additional holiday makers who’d ordinarily take 2 ski breaks, just took the one.
Sales for the independent travel sector fell by 15% with several no frills airlines cutting the no. of their routes to some airports.
Moreover tour operators witnessed their bookings going down by a similar 15%.
Still, the top six operators share rested at just over a healthy 70% and the Alps in France, and Chamonix in particular, remained the favourite ski destination with nearly 40% of ski holidays.
Due to this many tour operators slashed the number of luxury catered chalets they rent this year.
Catered ski chalets in particular are going to witness a reduction in clients due to the fact that a catered chalet costs more for the tour operator in terms of staff and rent when it is unsold.
It remains unlikely that we shall witness the type of special offers which were on the market this year.
Although prices are probably going to to go up, prices are unlikely to increase substantially.
The 2009/10 season without doubt presents real challenges for the ski industry that is influenced by the consequences of the credit crunch, weakness of the pound, increased costs of fuel and large fixed operating costs for skiing holiday companies.