“A warm-up tour”: several resorts in the Alps are opening the first slopes on Saturday, kicking off a ski season which risks seeing the gap between high-altitude and mid-mountain areas widen.
Like every year, the Savoyards Tignes and Val Thorens, located partly at more than 2,000 meters, are the first to draw. The second, affected by a cable car accident which left eight people injured, two of whom were serious on Tuesday, indicated that it would still remain open.
Conversely, the Grands Montets resort (Haute-Savoie), which also planned to launch on Saturday, indicated that it would postpone its opening by a week. Most other areas will stagger their opening between now and Christmas depending on weather and snow conditions.
The Alpine massifs benefited this week from heavy and early snowfall caused by the passage of storm Caetano on Thursday. But they should be followed this weekend by a “powerful mild spell”, announced Météo-France.
Even open, the stations will not yet be operating at full capacity. “The challenge is above all to launch the season, to break in the teams, to set up the events. The activity really starts from the following weeks (…) There, these are more weeks of heating tower”, explains to AFP Frédéric Porte, general manager of Tignes Développement, the company which manages the station's activity.
For the moment, reservations are “rather very good for the season”, particularly the week of the New Year, despite a package which should see its price increase by around 5%, he underlines.
– Customer reporting –
Same echo from the National Association of Mountain Resort Mayors (ANMSM), whose observatory anticipates a 5% increase in the occupancy rate in December 2024 compared to December 2023.
The fact remains that this positive trend covers “differences (…) depending on the massifs and stations”, recognizes the ANMSM. “Occupancy rates could also change during the season depending on snow cover and generally weather conditions,” warns its president Jean-Luch Boch.
In the Pyrenees, the first resort openings scheduled for the end of November are uncertain due to the lack of snow. But the president of the Pyrenees section of the Domaines Skiables de France (DSF) Laurent Garcia notes that “the bulk of the season” takes place after Christmas.
Last year, many mid-mountain resorts found themselves in difficulty during the winter holidays due to lack of snow and temperatures that were too mild, making it impossible to produce snow.
Conversely, the high altitude Alpine resorts had benefited from excess snowfall and a clear transfer of customers. The gap between these stations and those located lower or further south is expected to widen due to global warming, scientists estimate.
– “Fatalistic customer” –
At the start of the season, Fabrice Mielzarek, director of the Villard-de-Lans (Isère) Tourist Office, declares himself “not at all” worried about attendance.
“I believe that the client is resilient and fatalistic,” he tells AFP. “A lot of people are shooting on the same slopes. So, when we open 60-80% of the area, I want to say that that’s enough,” he emphasizes.
The resort, located in the Vercors massif between 1,500 and 2,000 meters above sea level, has also long had a wide “range” of non-ski activities adapted to its regional and family clientele in the event of a lack of snow, he explains.
“Certain low and medium altitude resorts are facing the full force of the effects of global warming and lack of snow. They are rapidly changing their model with difficult choices to make,” noted this week on France 3 the Minister Delegate in charge of the Tourism Economy Marina Ferrari.
“We have to help them. But I have good hope, we will continue to ski,” she added, while the Court of Auditors judged last year that the economic model of French skiing was “at risk. out of breath.”
Two areas, Notre-Dame-du-Pré (Savoie) and Seyne-les-Alpes (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) announced in the fall that they were going out of business, while the Isère resort of l'Alpe du Grand Serre, benefited from a one-year moratorium.
