Antoine Chandellier has an interesting article in the Dauphine Libere looking at ski resort investment in the Haute-Savoie. Six new lifts have been built for the 2009/10 season. Two four seater chairs at Chamonix in the Planards sector and at les Houches, three high speed six seater chairs at Samoëns, Châtel and les Carroz and a modernised drag lift at Praz-sur-Arly. The investments have cost 23 M€, considerably less than the 40 M€ invested last year although that figure was inflated by the Chamonix Planpraz gondola which cost 20 M€ alone. Most of the new investment is aimed at renewing existing routes rather than opening up new terriority or links.
The ski lift operators federation (SNTF – http://www.sntf.org) says that investment has been dropping over the last 5 years and reinvestment is now less than 10% of turnover compared to the period 2000-2005 where it reached nearly 20%. The result is that the average age of ski lifts is now 18 years compared to 15 years in 2000. (that must account for all the recent breakdowns).
The SNTF complains that the cost of building ski lifts has increased 46% over the last decade. Chandellier also blames how ski areas are generally run in the department where the local communities contract an operator to run the ski lifts (delegation de service public). He says this model doesn’t encourage investments as the operator sweats the infrastructure.
Resort have been focussing on snow making and piste improvements to enable skiing with less snow cover. For example at St Gervais they are now pumping water from a river rather than using the public water supply. The Haute-Savoie has snowmaking on 16% of runs compared to the average of 20% for France.
