While it’s really difficult to know what true impact the global recession is having on the ski industry, the first hurdle Christmas / New Year holiday periods, seems to be beating watchdog estimates. Many had predicted disaster and confirming two premises put forward by long term ski industry veterans.
First that skiers and boarders will keep skiing and boarding whatever the economy as it’s “a part of their life” and second that good snow brings good business, and for many areas of the world, the snow this year has been excellent.

Excellent business over the holiday period has been reported in Andorra, Canada, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and even by some resorts in the world’s most gloomy economy – the US.
In France some resorts claimed business was up 30% on a still quite healthy Christmas/New Year 2008/9 whilst the largest operator in the world, the Compagnie des Alpes, said before Christmas that its advance bookings had already put it 2.5% up on sale on the previous year at that point.
In New Hampshire, USA, Jiminy Peak reported that skier visits since mid-December were nearly 71, up 4 percent from last year and a record start for the year whilst over in Vermont Okemo said skier visits during the New Year week were 7 percent ahead of this time last year. Three major resorts in Colorado all reported record-setting days for the holiday weeks, while small resorts in North Carolina and outside Los Angeles reported skier visits up 40 percent.
Of course it is not all good news with media reports in the US noting that some major destination resorts in Colorado did see significant drops in business. However the overall impression is that rather than being universally bad as many media pundits predicted, overall it’s rather good.