:Forest Folk

In light of the depression skiing sales lowered this season.

Even with good early reservations coupled with excellent snow conditions.

These reductions in skiers follows on from seven winters of successive growth within the skiing industry, and the numbers shrunk from 1.2 million in 2008/9 to 850000 last winter.

Partly due to skiers giving their annual snowboarding trip a miss, while other snowboarders who’d typically have 2 skiing holidays, just took the one.

A fall of 15% was experienced by the independent travel sector and several cheap airlines slashing the number of their routes to certain destinations.

Some tour operators also saw the reservations going down by around 15%.

All the same, the top tour operators share of the market remained at a healthy 73% and the Alps in France carried on as the favourite ski destination with nearly 40% of the skiing market.

Because of this several large ski operators lowered the number of catered chalets they rent this winter.

The luxury chalets market especially will see a fall in clients as a catered ski chalet costs more for the tour operator in terms of chalet chefs and rent if it is not sold.

It’s unlikely therefore we shall see the type of special offers which were up for grabs this winter.

Costs are expected to rise, costs are unlikely to rise considerably.

This season will undoubtedly pose real problems for the ski industry which is influenced by the consequences of the credit crunch, exchange rate pressures, soaring costs of fuel on top of large fixed operating costs for skiing companies.

Next season skiers will be increasingly cost sensitive, which will add to an about face of the recent years that witnessed a development in the independent travel sector.

The big skiing operators could possibly claw back some of the customers lost to the independent snowboarding sector if they utilize their purchasing power to achieve reduced prices and pass these onto clients as attractive package deals.