Ever fancied running your own ski resort? Worried about the costs? Well a drag (Poma) lift covering 200 m of descent and capable of transporting 900 skiers/hour will cost you 300,000 €.
The problem is, your clients will start to ask for better pistes, a large snow basher will set you back a further 200,000 €. Now your ski resort is becoming popular, the queues start to build up so you install a chair lift with 300 m of descent. This can transport 1,500 skiers/hour but costs 1.5 M€. The punters want more, a bubble lift up to that nice mountain restaurant, 500 m of descent and capable of carrying 1,800 skiers/hour costs another 4 M€.
Now the neighbouring station wants to link up, maybe with a cable car, cost around 15 M€, or 500,000 lift passes at 30€. Finally you didn’t pick a high enough spot, global warming starts to affect visitor numbers. You install 1 km of snow making at a cost of 200,000 € for the equipment and reservoirs plus 100,000 €/season to run.
(source: [url=http://www.sntf.org]http://www.sntf.org[/url] etc.)