SKIREBEL Magazine

The Compgnie des Alpes, the world’s largest ski resort operating company, has reported a big jump in sales for the first six months of its annual year, which started last October.

The company reports that, in a direct comparison to sales last year, turnover grew by 10.9 percent. It credits excellent snow conditions throughout the winter, international sales, quality of product and the early Easter as factors in this season’s success.

However company sales were in reality even better – up 27.7%, mostly due to the integration of Saas Fee and Val d’Isere’s lift operating companies which Compagnie des Alpes fully integrated in to their operations on 1st October 2007.

Unlike many operators in the Alps, Compagnie des Alpes had not really seen any decline in business last winter when the Alps had a difficult winter with poor snow cover at lowrer altitude, this was in large part due to the fact that all of Compagnie Des Alpe’s resorts have high altitude skiing and were less affected.

In terms of visitor numbers, the figures are also likely to be up on last winter. Taking into account the results obtained up to March 31st , 2008, the Group expects record visitor numbers with almost 13.5 million skier days compared to 12.8 million last winter on a like-for-like basis.

Compagnie des Alpes operates 17 leading ski areas including Tignes, Val d’Isère, Les Arcs, La Plagne, Les Menuires, Méribel, and Chamonix.