Austria's Ski Tourism Unlikely To Resume Before March

The Austrian government has announced that its current 'hard lockdown' will be extended again to at least 8th February.

If things are looking better with the pandemic then the Austrian government says there may be small easings of restrictions, however they say re-opening restaurants and hotels is unlikely before the end of February at the earliest.

It is believed Austrian ski areas will be able to stay open to local people.

In better news the FIS have announced today that the Hahnenkamm downhill race, and the re-scheduled Lauberhorn race from Wengen are still currently 'on' for next weekend at Kitzbuhel. There had been worries that a virus outbreak in the nearby village of Jochberg might lead to the races having to be moved, as was the case with the Wengen races.

During investigations into the COVID-19 outbreak in Jochberg the Tyrolean Ski Instructors Association discovered that around 30 foreign ski schools were operating illegally. The ski instructors' association has announced that it will file administrative charges against the ski schools concerned. In addition, they are also going to report the instructors concerned to the financial police, because they not registered Tyrol.

Interesting. So is the thinking that these are all British and kits a change of rules under Brexit or is it more geographically widespread and something that has been going on for years and Brexit irrelevant? Got a press release from FIS this morning saying the FIS race director has gone down with virus but everyone else tested negative and next weekend's races still on. Thanks for your separate updates on St Moritz and thoughts on chap in Wengen hotel too - make sense. I started to reply that I wondered, if it got to nitty gritty in court case, if he/she could claim ignorance of need to self-isolate but of course he/she would have received official text messages even if hotel staff hadn't told him/her?

I don't think its anything to do with Brexit, one of the 2 ski schools named in the article that appeared in the Tiroler Tageszeitung is Danish and the other is registered in state of Salzburg, but is owned by foreigners, so it looks like that they are suspected of breaching Tyrolian law. I think each region has its own ski school laws, Tyrol certainly does. As the financial police are also involved tax fraud, social fraud, the violation of labour rights and employment regulations might also be involved.

Under normal circumstances this would have probably gone unnoticed, it involves the provision of pre-instructor training courses. The skiing performance of many foreign skiers who want to take the "Anwärter" exams is inadequate so they have to be trained up first. These courses are said to be very lucrative; the Tyrolian Ski Instructors Association doesn't provide them.

There is a saying here in the German speaking part of canton Valais "The oldest Walliser is the wind, the second oldest is envy!"

Ignorance is also not a defence in law in Switzerland. If the public prosecutor does decide to prosecute him, I would imagine he would make sure that all his ducks were in a row first. A criminal conviction might be the least of his worries as a criminal conviction would make it much easier for injured parties to pursue him through the civil courts, but as he is a foreign national there might be practical issues with that.

Many thanks again. I do recall talk of there being quite a lot of 'technically illegal' ski schools in Austria when the French (in particular) and (I think also) Italians were cracking down on British ski instructors. I seem to recall the odd Austrian crack down in the past, St Anton maybe?

The last incident that I can recall in Austria concerned Belgium and German coach tour operators who were bringing in their own ski instructors.

The Anwärter training courses run by the 'foreign' ski schools last up to 6 weeks whereas the Anwärter training courses run by the Tyrolean Ski Instructors Association only last 10 days. According to Christian Abenthung the managing director of the Tyrolean Ski Instructors Association, ski instructor training is solely a matter for the ski instructors association of the respective federal state (Land) and if someone is training to be a ski instructor, it should be a logical prerequisite that that person can ski well enough to begin the training. Anyone who first needs an expensive private course in order to acquire the necessary skills is completely unsuitable for the job from the start.

Because the performance improvement parts of these instructor training courses have nothing to do with the official training courses, they are regarded as being no more than normal skiing performance improvement courses. According to the Austrian COVID-19 ordinance, these are currently only allowed for small groups of people who come from the same household.