Zermatt and Verbier Compared

Verbier

Switzerland is fortunate to have some of the very best ski resorts in the world, and Zermatt and Verbier are amongst the very best. But how do they compare?

The Matterhorn, above Zermatt

Location
Both resorts are in the Pennine Alps in the Swiss canton of Valais, and both are high, particularly Zermatt. The most obvious difference between them is that Zermatt is in the part of Switzerland where a uniquely Swiss form of German is spoken, whereas Verbier is French-speaking. Verbier rests on a sunny plateau above the valley of Bagnes, whereas Zermatt lies right at the head of a long steep valley. The nearest international airport to Verbier is Geneva, whilst Zermatt is equally served by Geneva and Zurich airports.
Both relatively convenient for international visitors.

Pistes
Zermatt has 360km of piste spread over four highly integrated ski areas in Switzerland and two across the border in Italy. Although Verbier is part of the extensive Four Valleys, with 412km of piste, the valleys are less well connected than Zermatt, and you will probably not get round to visiting some of the more remote slopes beyond Siviez. Honours even.

Skiing under the Matterhorn

Season
Pretty much nowhere in the world can beat Zermatt for year-round skiing. Granted that summer skiing is something of a novelty, Zermatt nonetheless offers extensive glacier skiing from the beginning of November right through to the end of May, with the full extent of the resort available from the beginning of December until the end of April.
Verbier normally opens up one piste in November, and the resort progressively opens up in the following weeks. Normally the season finishes in mid-April.
For early and late season skiing, nothing beats Zermatt, but it can get very cold in the heart of the winter.
Zermatt for early and late season, Verbier edges it for mid-season.

Beginners
Neither resort is especially good for beginners, but Verbier does have a nursery area in the village. Unless you are coming with a mixed ability party which includes experts, or you just want to party, neither resort is recommended for beginners. You pay a premium in these resorts because of challenging slopes a beginner will never get to experience.
Beginners should look elsewhere but, if you had to choose, Verbier is better.

Intermediates
I think both resorts are excellent for intermediates. If you come for a week or two you will never want for more variety or challenge, or for nice cruisy runs when you have a hangover to shake off.
Even Stevens.

Expert
Both resorts have good skiing for experts, but if you want to stick to ungroomed trails and challenging lift-served off-piste, Verbier has more to offer. For back-country ski touring they both make excellent bases, and both lie on the famous Haute Route (Verbier only on a variation of the classic route).
Verbier is my recommendation.

Apres-ski
Apres-ski in Switzerland is generally more subdued than in other Alpine nations, but Verbier and Zermatt are exceptions to the rule. They both rock, but I prefer…
Zermatt.

Mountain Restaurants
Both resorts have a mix of cafeteria restaurants with sunny balconies and charming restaurants in the mountains. However Zermatt is something of an epicurean’s delight with some of the most outstanding mountain restaurants in the world. Not really a contest if you want haute cuisine for lunch. But it comes at a price. In the resorts themselves there is a wide range of options from street food to Michelin-starred restaurants.
The Blue Ribbon goes to Zermatt.

Lunch above Verbier
Lunch above Verbier

Resort Charm
Lying beneath the Matterhorn, nowhere quite matches Zermatt for chocolate box pretty. It is car-free, although not traffic-free as the electric taxis and service vehicles mean some streets are quite busy. It has a fabulous Alpine tradition stretching back many centuries, and was well-established as a tourist destination by the middle of the 19th Century. Verbier, conversely, is largely a post-war resort, but it’s ubiquitous chalet-style architecture is not without its charm.
Zermatt has it all.

Access – Car
You can’t drive to Zermatt, you have to pay to leave your car in a car park in a neighbouring town and take a train for the last section. Verbier does have full car access, but you generally need to pay for parking unless it comes with your chalet. There is free parking at the bottom station of the gondola that passes through Verbier at Le Châble .
Assuming you are driving from the Lake Geneva Region, it will take you about 3 hours to get to Täsch, the end of the road, and then 10 minutes by train to Zermatt.
Verbier is one of the easiest resorts to get to from Geneva, 2 hours of mainly motorway to Le Châble, and about another 10 minutes drive from there up to Verbier.
Verbier is the easier to get to from almost anywhere.

Access – Train
Zermatt is very easy to get to from either Zurich or Geneva airport by train – both airports actually have railway stations in the airports themselves and you can get to the resort with as few as one change (in Visp). Journey time from Zurich Airport is just under 4 hours, from Geneva Airport just over 4 hours.
For Verbier, Le Châble is just over 2 hours from Geneva Airport with a change at Martigny. From Le Châble you can either take the gondola or the local bus service into Verbier.
The train to Zermatt is a joy even if the journey time is longer.

Verbier

Cost
You would struggle to find two more expensive resorts in the Alps than Zermatt and Verbier, but it is possible to enjoy them both on a budget. First of all the lift passes are probably cheaper than in comparable French and Austrian resorts – a typical day pass for Verbier is SFr 71, and SFr 92 for Zermatt, and longer stays are substantially cheper per diem. For accommodation, there are affordable hostels and basic accommodation in Zermatt itself and in Le Châble for Verbier. You can also ski the slopes of Zermatt from Cervinia in Italy. Although eating and drinking out is expensive in Switzerland, supermarket prices for alcohol and, to a lesser extent, food staples are not expensive by European standards so self-catering will certainly make your francs go further.
Neither resort is cheap, but there aren’t many resorts that come close to being this good.

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Customer experience: how important is it?

Person leaving a review

Customer engagement,Email marketing

Customer experience (CX) is super important to the success of your business. A positive experience stays with you. Equally, so does a bad one. To start delivering exceptional experiences, it’s import we understand what makes one. Read more about the best digital experience platform.

What is customer experience?

CX is the customer’s perception of your brand, based on their interactions with your business.

That means, every single interaction with your brand, from email marketing and website visits, to the purchase process, a tweet on social media – all of these interactions will contribute to their impression of your brand.

Everything you do impacts your customers’ perceptions – so every touchpoint matters. A good experience will leave them wanting more. A bad experience can drive them away forever.

The perception of your brand that customers take away from their experience with you will ultimately impact your bottom line. So getting it right is essential.

What’s the difference between customer experience and customer service?

As brands recognize the importance of customer experience, there can be some confusion about where it belongs in your business. Most brands have a customer service department responsible for interacting with customers. As a result, customer experience should sit with them, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Customer service relates only to specific touchpoints where customers receive or request assistance. For example, when a customer calls an operator to cancel an order or emails a service provider. As customer experience is based on all interactions with your brand, customer service is effectively a part of it.

If you’re planning on adding a specialist CX team to your business, it’s important to remember that they are involved with far more than just the customer service team.

Customer services team image

Why is customer experience important?

We’ve already mentioned that customer experience can affect your business’s bottom line. Delivering an exceptional customer experience offers a range of benefits for your business:

  • Increased customer loyalty – when a customer trusts your brand, they’re going to return time and again.
  • Better customer advocacy – loyal customers are more likely to become brand advocates, sharing their experience with friends, family, and colleagues.
  • Longer customer retention – whether your buying cycle is long or short, a good experience will keep your brand at the top of customers’ minds when buying decisions need to be made.

How to measure customer experience

Customer experience can only be optimized and improved when you can measure your current success. As CX is based on customer perception, you need to gather insight from your customers.

  1. Reviews and ratings
    Requesting reviews and ratings of products and services is essential. Not only does it help product development, but it also helps you identify products or services that are failing to meet customer expectations.
  2. Unsubscribe survey
    Surveying customers when they unsubscribe from your email marketing will help you pinpoint reasons for customer churn. Churn is inevitable, but if you understand the reasons behind it, you can begin to optimize the customer experience to lower the churn rate.
  3. Customer satisfaction surveys
    You should regularly be sending customer satisfaction surveys to your database. You’ll increase your chances of getting responses if you incentivize your surveys with gift vouchers, but they’re a great tool to understand your customers. In these surveys, you can ask shoppers about anything ranging from website experience and opinions on new product launches using intelligent survey branching to create unique customer pathways.
  4. Customer service feedback
    Analyzing the feedback you receive from your customer service operations is also very helpful. If you use a support ticket system or ask qualifying questions you can reveal recurring issue among your customers. The ultimate goal is to reduce the number of tickets, calls, or live chats that are logged with your customer service teams.

4 tips to improve your customer experience

When strategizing to enhance customer experience, marketers frequently prioritize areas such as websites, automation, and social channels. However, it’s crucial not to overlook certain quick-wins that can make a substantial impact. For instance, optimizing content to attract TikTokviews from the UK is a valuable tactic that aligns with the broader goal of providing a seamless and engaging experience for your audience. By tailoring your content to resonate with the audience, you not only enhance your visibility but also cater to the specific preferences and interests of this demographic, contributing to an overall improved customer experience. Click this link here to see more.

Customer experience is important

Customer experience is important – that much is clear. Creating remarkable experiences will keep customers coming back, and if you’re really smashing it, advocating for your brand too. The more trust and loyalty you can develop with every interaction, the more the customer will spend with you, as you continue to meet their needs and expectations.

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Avalanche Risk Mitigation

The Swiss Institute for Snow & Avalanche Research (SLF) recorded 27 deaths from Avalanches in the winter season 2021/22 up to the end of March, double the number for the previous year and the moving average over the last 20 years. All the victims were winter sports enthusiasts on unsecured terrain – 11 back country and 16 off-piste – and a quarter were in the Verbier area.

Why do skiers and snowboarders get killed by avalanches, I have often been asked. Can’t they just ski out of the path of the snow slide?

Simply put, it is almost impossible to out-run an avalanche. A skier normally travels around 30km/hr, whilst an avalanche can exceed 100km/hr, faster than all but the fastest skier can travel in perfect conditions. Additionally a skier may not be aware that an avalanche has formed until it is upon them, as they can begin with little warning and an almost imperceptible change in the condition of the snow. Then, very rapidly, the force of the product of the mass and acceleration of the slab of snow is capable of knocking over anything in its way.

Just like a flood of water, it is possible to “float” on an avalanche by wearing and deploying an avalanche airbag. Without one, however, you will almost certainly be swept under. It is sometimes possible to “swim” through an avalanche, but swimming in an avalanche is not a skill the average victim will have.

An avalanche typically contains many hundreds or thousands of cubic metres of snow, and the snow consistency is often heavy once it settles. One cubic metre can weigh 500kg, so if you are under an avalanche that has settled you cannot normally lift yourself out of the snow. You would need to dig your way out, and that could well be through a substantial layer of snow. It may not even be clear which way is up. Your best chance of survival is that someone else is able to dig you out – assuming they know where to dig.

Even if a skier is conscious and knows which way is up when they have found themselves under an avalanche, the snow will likely encase them such that they are unable to move. The air pocket around their face will be unable to sustain them for more than a short period, perhaps a few minutes. 85% of avalanche deaths are due to asphyxiation.

The impact of the avalanche may well have made the skier unconscious or caused serious injury. In 15% of avalanche fatalities trauma is a factor. Avalanches often include debris such as trees and rocks, and in turn may sweep a skier on to rocks or other hard objects.

If a victim of an avalanche is not killed by the impact and is dug out within 5 minutes there is a 90% chance of survival. If they have been able to create a large enough air pocket a survival time of an hour is possible but is rare.

I have talked in an earlier article about how important it is to have some form of beacon, such as a RECCO reflector, in ski gear to improve the chances of being found. If you do survive an avalanche, it is likely because of some one else’s preparedness.


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Avalanche Fatalities

WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF , 4.02.2021

Although most ski lifts have remained open in Switzerland during the Covid pandemic, more skiers and snowboarders than ever are choosing to go back-country skiing. Inevitably this has led to a record number of avalanche fatalities, with the number of fatal incidents this season to date more than any previous season this century. The season average is 22 fatalities, whereas this year there have been 17 already – and notably that also represents 17 separate incidents.

Fatalities by risk factor

A handful of fatalities were from skiing off-piste, i.e. using lift-served unmarked routes, but the majority of the deaths in Switzerland have been back-country skiers and snowboarders. One would generally expect these people to be better prepared than those killed off-piste. Four of the back-country fatalities occurred when the avalanche risk was moderate. These include one in the Jura, the first avalanche fatality in this area that I am aware of in over 20 years.

One off-piste fatality of a British skier occurred below les Attelas in Verbier on 18th January when the avalanche risk was moderate. This is generally considered a ‘safe’ off-piste area, bounded as it is by lifts and groomed runs. As is usually the case, the unfortunate skier was not alone, and other people were also caught by the avalanche but survived.

Interestingly very few avalanche fatalities (3%) historically occur when the avalanche risk is high and none when the risk is very high. The majority of deaths occur when the avalanche risk is considered considerable (65%). For people going off-piste an even higher proportion of fatalities occur when the risk is considerable.

Not surprisingly the majority of fatalities occur in Grabunden and Valais since these cantons are most popular for back-country touring and off-piste. However this does not mean other areas are safe. To add to the fatality in the Jura, there was also a fatality this season in Rochers de Naye amongst a group of young skiers – this in a pre-Alpine ski resort above Montreux.

The message to me seems clear. If the risk of an avalanche is considered anything more than moderate even well-prepared back-country outings would be well advised to abandon their plans. However 30% of fatalities occur when the avalanche risk is moderate (and 2% when it is low), so the advice is to thoroughly plan back-country expeditions and off-piste runs even in these conditions.

It is worth adding that every year there are also fatalities amongst other winter sports enthusiasts, typically a couple of snowshoe walkers a year die in avalanches. Additionally over 90% of avalanche fatalities are triggered by the victims and their companions.

Switzerland has the most sophisticated avalanche-warning system in the world, largely due to the sheer scale of the detection capabilities the SLF (Institute for Snow and Avalanche research) has at it’s disposal. However risk to an individual skier or snowboarder needs to be augmented by an assessment of the specific conditions the skier or snowboarder finds themselves in. It is the case that even pisted, patrolled runs can be hit by avalanches.

Many back-country skiers are well-prepared for the risk of avalanches, but I believe even resort skiers should be aware of what contributes to avalanche risk, and inspect the terrain they ski through, on or off-piste.

My golden rules are PRICK:

  1. Plan. Decide in advance where you are going and what risk factors may apply. Discuss with your party in advance in which circumstances you would change your plan, e.g. because of a perceived avalanche risk. Ensure you know where you are going and discuss rendez-vous points. Make a note of distinctive features on your route so you can accurately communicate where you are if you need to.
  2. Risk Assess. Check the current avalanche risk assessment for where you are going. Be aware conditions may deteriorate during the day.
  3. Inspect. Before you set out make an assessment of where you are going, visually and taking advantage of local knowledge. Whilst out, look above and around you throughout your day for higher risk features – rocky outcrops and corniches, broken branches on the uphill side of trees and other evidence of previous avalanches, particularly steep (30-45%) or convex slopes…
  4. Choose. Choose your route according to the above factors. If in doubt choose the safest option. Don’t get drawn into the ‘incident pit’.
  5. Kit up. Have the right kit with you. For off-piste, having a working phone on you and RECCO reflectors is a minimum, but equipment required for back-country may also be appropriate for more challenging off-piste conditions. For back-country, tranceivers, probes, shovels and appropriate training are considered essential, and airbags are recommended.

For those not familiar with the RECCO system, it is a very small battery-free transponder, frequently found in ski clothing and backpacks but which can also be purchased separately and attached to helmets, boots or ski jackets. In most resorts rescue teams can detect the presence of a RECCO reflector within around 200m.

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