Everything you need to know about skiing and other Alpine winter sports
The 2020/21 ski season has begun! The Glacier 3000 ski area between Les Diablerets and Gstaad opened Monday 28th September, over a month before its scheduled 4th November opening, after it received 70cm of snowfall. Early snow has blanketed the Alps.
Saas Fee and Zermatt are also open, but with their summer schedules and reduced ski areas. Glacier 3000 will also be only opening a limited ski area, namely the Scex Rouge piste and lift.
A common question amongst winter sports enthusiasts is: what is the best ski resort in the world? Of course there is no correct answer, but many column inches have been dedicated to the question, including on this blog! The Daily Torygraph, which for all its political failings does a good job of covering winter sports, analysed what its readers researched and came up with the following list:
It is an interesting list, dominated by French resorts, perhaps addressing a certain demographic’s idea of what is a good package holiday destination. Nowhere from North America? No Wengen. No Cortina. No Borovets for the budget conscious? Morzine over Avoriaz? Nonetheless a selection of resorts you can’t fault. Not my list though.
The Eurostar Ski Train tickets goes on sale tomorrow at 8am (Wednesday, 17th July 2019). There is a handy guide by Daniel at Snowcarbon on getting the best seats here. I found out about this from an email from Daniel and was also introduced to this character that the he interviewed extolling the virtues of taking the train:
Daniel knows how to get you to the Alps, but if you are already in the area and want to know public transport options, check out Snow and Rail which gives details on every ski resort in the Alps you can get to by train alone.
The federal Statistics Office released details on hotel occupancy earlier this year. Despite the high exchange rate, Switzerland saw growth in overnight stays every month in 2018 over the previous year leading to an overall record number of overnight stays for the year as a whole. The USA fulled the largest increase in overseas visitors at 9%, but Asia also saw a 5% increase and Europe as a whole over 3%. The benefits were uniform across most tourist areas, with the exception of Ticino which saw a marked decline in overnight stays.