Skiing in The Alps vs North America

Heading off for a break to go skiing in the Alps? Find out here how it competes favourably with popualr North American destinations.?/p>

For some decades now, on and off, certain pundits have been predicting that skiing in the Alps would struggle to compete with some of the newly evolving ski destinations elsewhere in the world. The truth is that not only has Europe continued to compete very well, but in fact, it can be argued that the popularity of skiing in the Alps has increased when compared to longer-haul skiing destinations.

North America

Back in the last decades of the 20th century, the doomsayers were out in force for the European skiing industry. Many were predicting that the advent of cheap transatlantic air travel would sound the death knell for some Alpine resorts. Their logic appeared to be based largely around the typically lower costs of the North American marketplace, coupled with the inbuilt assumption about the superiority of service standards in the USA and Canada. The argument ran along the lines that now that people could get to North America quickly, and for relatively modest sums of money, those Swiss, French and Italian resorts will be blown away by commercial pressures.

Of course, as anyone can see, that simply never happened and there is no likelihood of it doing so in the foreseeable future either. So, what makes skiing in the Alps arguably more popular today than it has ever been in the past?

Time

The first thing many prophets of doom perhaps failed to take sufficiently into account is that a significant number of holidaymakers take very short ski breaks. It’s perfectly possible to slip over to the Alpine slopes for a long weekend, and you don't have to spend more than a couple of hours each way in transit. Try going skiing in North America for the weekend and see the difference!

Facilities

Another big advantage Europeans have is simply their experience. They understand what skiers want and have perfected that over many, many decades. It’s not easy to replicate experience in relatively new resorts elsewhere, and some in North America have had to go through that steep learning curve. While nobody seriously doubts that most of the facilities in North America are superb, delivering them to the market in a packaged service proposition hasn’t always been easy.

Rising prices

Those old 1980s dreams that we would all be hopping backwards and forwards across the Atlantic for next to nothing on bus-like services have simply disappeared, sacrificed on the altar of economics. Rising fuel prices, environmental concerns and also security worries have all played their part in making the European slopes seem even more attractive. Suddenly, the old assumption that "USA = cheap" just can’t be held true anymore.

New facilities and investment in the Alps

Whatever may have been the case in the past within the European holiday industry, over recent decades the skiing sector has certainly got its act together. The investment that many resorts have put into things such as snow cannons and off-piste entertainment, now means that they offer an all-round holiday experience that some of the resorts in North America simply struggle to match.

For all these reasons above, skiing in the Alps continues to compare extremely favourably when examined alongside North American destinations, and the future looks secure.

Article Tags: North America