Sunday, February 21, 2010
Ski Resorts Thrive, Despite Recession Pain
In the midst of the recession in 2009, as most industries were going under and doing poorly, the ski resort industry rose by 2.3%, and is forecasted to rise by 6% throughout 2010. Small resorts have been boughten out by larger ones and no two main companies, Intrawest and Vail Resorts control 51% of industry revenue. Even thought things look good, they can never be too sure because their profits mainly deal with weather, and there is no predicting that.
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4 comments:
I think it is weird to find out that ski resorts actually did well during the recession, because i would have guessed people to view skiing as a luxury.
Is this possibly a result of the weak dollar versus the euro and thus more Europeans are coming to the United States for recreation rather than staying there? Especially because skiing is so popular among the Nordic countries, this may be closely tied to the foreign exchange rate and more importantly the devaluation of the dollar.
The comment Kyle made about the currency exchange rate is interesting. I think there could be a multitude of reasons for the skiing industries success but one of these reasons is that more and more people are starting to view skiing and snowboarding as a sport more than a recreation so they do it more often.
Well i find this article to be absolutely shocking as i have grown up in the middle of ski country in Vermont and live within 30 minutes of one of intrawest's largest claims, Stratton Mountain Ski Resort. It was interestingly reported just the other day in my home town that there were negotiations to actually sell the Intrawest ski resort.
But i can tell you by experience that yes, ski resorts have done multitude of things to draw crowds and continues crowds to the mountains. Some of this has been done through the building lavish condo's and year round homesteads, but also through as krfaris said above a changing culture. Today, many high schools in my state including my own have Snowboarding, skiing, and cross-country skiing teams that compete at the state and national level.
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