Compagnie des Alpes expects business up 2 percent on previous season

Compagnie des Alpes, the world's leading ski resort operator, has announced a small fall in sales to the end of March, but expects full season figures to show an improvement of around 2 percent (compared to the record numbers of the previous season. The company operates 17 leading ski areas in the French Alps (including Tignes, Val d'Isère, Les Arcs, La Plagne, Les Menuires, Méribel and Chamonix).

Good snow conditions and Easter falling in April resulted in good business for the 2009 spring season.

Compagnie des Alpes Chairman and CEO Dominique Marcel commented, "the attractiveness of our sites and quality of our services showed through in the resilience of Compagnie des Alpes Ski Areas, which weathered a difficult economic climate."

The company believes that two economic factors explain the slight decline in sales to March 31st. This year, the Easter weekend and vacations, especially for foreign visitors, were in April. Also the world ski championships, held in February, at a peak time of the season, adversely affected business for the companies of Espace Killy (Tignes and Val d'Isère).

According to a company statement :-

Medium- and low-altitude sites, as well as non-Alpine sites, benefited from abundant snowfall. Despite the economic climate, which has been particularly harsh on British customers (20% of all CDA Ski Areas customers), Group Ski Area skier visits should on par with the average for the past five financial years. Revenues per skier day continued to rise (by about +4%), getting a particular boost this year from the reopening of the Paradiski ski area.

Next year 2009/10 will be the tuff one :cry:

"the attractiveness of our sites and quality of our services showed through"

As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find little attractive to my eye in the Tarentaise Ski Factories.

A good example of their quality service would be the fiasco over access to Les Houches last winter over the Mont Blanc Unlimited Pass :roll:


I agree with Wickers, next winter will be harder. Until now, they have had large Tour Companies bringing in parties by the coachload, to bolster profits.

bandit wrote:

"the attractiveness of our sites and quality of our services showed through"

As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find little attractive to my eye in the Tarentaise Ski Factories.

A good example of their quality service would be the fiasco over access to Les Houches last winter over the Mont Blanc Unlimited Pass :roll:


I agree with Wickers, next winter will be harder. Until now, they have had large Tour Companies bringing in parties by the coachload, to bolster profits.

This year it was dam the recession lets just enjoy ourselves, now the recession has bitten some what deeper.....there could be trouble ahead :cry: :cry:

If your shares are down 50%, you're not going to be honest, are you ?

Trencher

"Revenues per skier day continued to rise (by about +4%), "

I think this comment is quite telling. It seems evident that there is an expectation that "Revenue per skier" ought to be rising, in a targeted way. For many years, I have refused to believe that the French approach is sustainable. And that belief pre-dated the current financial strife.

I am a great admirer of many things that the French engineer, good examples being their energy policy and transport infrastructure. However, when they migrated this big thinking to ski resorts, they seemed to leave out all the charisma.

My inner beliefs have been honed throughout my engineering business life, are that you have to succeed in diametrically opposed directions ~ you have to constantly improve facility and quality, and you have to find ways of achieving these at continuing relatively lower costs.

Austria and Italy have achieved this. But Switzerland has been amazing in transforming itself.

We had some chalet host staying with us last week, on their way home last week, and they said there was
a lot worried chalet owners in the La Tania, Le Praz, areas with no options with companies for their chalets next season.
Goff

The excellent Pistehors.com has another view of how Chamonix has fared this winter. It makes a most interesting counterpoint to the CDA output, with detail on boardroom sackings and a massive overspend on a new lift.

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/0928-chamonix-fires-lift-director/