Grenoble (AFP)
The 2019-2020 season has been the "worst" in two decades for the ski tourism industry in the world due to the pandemic, estimates a report released on Tuesday, which projects an even worse 2020/21 season .
The number of day-skiers has fallen by 18% in the world between October 2019 and October 2020 compared to the previous season, writes the Swiss Laurent Vanat in his 2021 international report on ski and mountain tourism which is the benchmark.
In mid-March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic abruptly interrupted a 2019-20 winter season which had "started very well" in the Alps despite a particularly hot winter in Europe, and almost all ski countries have closed their stations.
If the small resorts have not lost a large number of skiers, those located at high altitude "have lost two months of the season" in spring 2020, explains to AFP Laurent Vanat, ski tourism specialist and manager of a consulting firm in Geneva.
Asia-Pacific (16% of the global ski market) was hit hardest because it was first hit by the epidemic, with a 31% drop in the number of ski passes sold, compared to 15% in France compared to the average in recent years.
The previous season, 2018-2019, was "the best in twenty years" at the world level, according to last year's report.
Attendance has been stable overall for about twenty years.
For the current season, it is "the great unknown", notes Mr. Vanat, "it is difficult to still make a prognosis today".
One thing is certain: in France, one of the few countries to have closed its stations with Italy and Germany, "it will be a total disaster", while in China, "it did not happen. badly gone at all ”, just like in the United States.
Switzerland, which has kept its resorts open but which has lost some of the foreign tourists, should see a drop of around 25% this season, the expert estimates.
"Everyone knows that the winter of 2020/21 will be even worse in many countries," he adds.
However, he notes a "renewed interest in learning to ski" in a period of pandemic, where "empty slopes (...) have turned into learning areas for beginners".
© 2021 AFP