Skiing-area improvements

Question
Hello,

I have been skiing in Lech(part of
the Arlberg ski-circus in Austria) for 25 years now, and have been skiing every single year, overall, for 32 years, since I was 6. My current problem is that I want to get the Arlberg lift authorities to carry out some improvements and I am wondering how to persuade them in the most effective manner.
I previously sent an e-mail to them, outlining my requests and they quickly replied, albeit very politely, with a resounding "No" to all of them. I am pretty certain that many or all of their given excuses were flawed and likely completely bogus, and wanted your honest opinion of the validity of their excuses, and also your opinion on how best to convince them/pressure them(bribery excluded as I'm not a rich man!).

My 1st request was that they have 1 piste in each area  which gets floodlit for one night every week, from 18:30 to 22:00. I had this experience in the French ski resort of Valmorel, and it was wonderful. The Arlberg people replied that they had posted a questionnaire offering this very thing, and people had almost all replied "yes" to the proposal but had also mostly stated that "they would only rarely or never ski at night anyway if this option was available". I am highly dubious at this excuse as it is so easy nowadays to deliberately rephrase/reword a poll in a way that makes your desired choice the most likely one.Plus, I'm sure they were exaggerating heavily.

I had also asked if the (free) skibus which links us to a far-off ski-lift(the Valfagehrbahn) could go 20 minutes earlier from Lech, at 8.40 instead of 9.00, so that we could arrive, spend 5 minutes putting on our skis and go up as soon as the Valfagehrbahn lift started at 8.45 am, rather than wasting 15-20 minutes of skiing. The excuse given by the lift-authorities was that those free buses were not used  by enough people so early in the morning to justify that. I am sure this is nonsense as I usually come during times when there are no school-holidays, but when those holidays come in, far, far more people are in the resorts and therefore use those buses.

The last, and most crucial improvement I wanted, was that the Arlberg lift authorities stayed open an hour longer  at  least at the end of the day, especially after December. The French ski-resorts I also visited were far better, in this regard, as they kept the lifts opened until c.17:00/17:30, whereas the Arlberg people keep them open only until between 15:45 to 17:00, with most such lifts closing at 16:00, and only 1 or 2 at the very bottom staying open until 17:00.  The excuse given by the Arlberg people was that , in Spring, the snow-conditions are best in the morning due to the higher temperatures, and that therefore they have allowed some lifts to start working from 08:30 am, instead of 09:00. They refuse to allow lift-opening times to be extended in the afternoon because of this supposed temperature issue, and because they claim that there are too few people skiing at those times to justify it.  However, the lifts starting at 08:30 seem to be only a meagre  1 or 2 per resort and are only the lifts at the bottom of a resort, with other lifts further up only starting at 09:00 or 09:15. And the excuse given re not many people skiing at that time is absurd, as the main reason people stop skiing is that they have to go down much earlier than they would want, since they want to be able to reach the bottom pistes of a resort in time before all the lifts close, as otherwise they could get stuck in some places and have to clamber up a piste or two with their skis to get all the way down.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions re convincing them to do more re such improvements, I would be glad to hear from you. The Arlberg ski-region does seem to add improvements, here and there, but it seems to take them a very long time(for example, for the 1st 10 or 15 years in the Arlberg, I would often have to wait a minimum 15 to 30 minutes at every single lift, sometimes more, because of the vast queues; though they did eventually bring in chairlifts with 4, 6 and even 8 seats in the end, which solved the problem.

Thanks,
Geoff  

Answer
Hey Geoff,

I applaud your efforts to try to get changes at your local ski area. But I'm afraid that you are on a very long and uphill battle to get a large corporation to change. They feel that they are serving the masses (that's where the money is - volume) and a few individuals don't make enough difference to justify the expenses of longer hours or adding lights.

I fully understand your reasonings and support you 100%. I think all ski areas should have longer hours and offer night skiing. But looking at it from a resort perspective, is a handful of people worth the cost of having employees work longer hours, the extra cost of electricity, and all the other unknown costs that we don't see.

Case in point, I grew up at a smaller ski area that now boasts 5 chair lifts and a 3.2 mile gondola to access the mountain. Their electricity costs alone are around $500 per hour just to run the gondola, lifts, and buildings. Not to mention employee costs to run the lifts, ski patrol, maintenance, etc.

How many skiers would need to buy a ticket to justify an extra hour of skiing? Now apply these numbers to a larger resort and maybe you will have some understanding of why they seem to not hear your 'suggestions'. What would seem to be a simple solution to us could be a very large and complex solution for them.

My only suggestion would be to maybe have other skiers fill out a form regarding changes they would like to see. On your questionnaire, ask them what they would like to see changed or added and also ask them questions regarding your suggestions (ie; for or against), and then submit the questionnaires to the resort. The voice of many is much louder than the voice of a few.

Hope this helps.
Keep on skiing,
Windlover