New Resorts, New Country, For 09-10
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Britain’s leading tour operators have come out fighting with their recently announced 2009-10 ski season programmes.
Despite seeing a downturn in business during last winter’s credit crunch, and cutting back on capacity for the coming winter (the advice to secure a preference, especially in peak periods, is inevitably, “book early.â€) operators are still offering a choice of more than 200 ski resorts in a dozen countries between them – from California to Lapland to Japan.
There are even new resorts and new countries to choose to ski in, despite the downturn.
Inghams have added a ski option in the Slovak Republic, a little known part of Eastern Europe, once half of Czecheslovakia, that has more than 200 ski areas, mostly spread across the Tatras mountains. The country is part of the EC and joined the Euro at the start of this year. The best resorts there offer skiers the benefits of both modern facilities fuelled by EC development donations and still some of the lowest prices on the continent.
Crystal have added Itter in Austria, not previously available in any ski holiday brochure either. Primarily a beginner ‘s resort with limited local skiing, it is located in one of Austria’s largest inter connected ski areas with a ski connection directly from the village, so offers the best of both worlds.
All tour operators are making a great effort to offer high value pricing, with most offering a selection of all-inclusive holidays with the cost of usual extras like ski carriage or rental and lift tickets included. The increasing strength of the pound against the euro and the Dollar should bring in resort costs down too this winter if the trend continues.
