by Will Alpine skiers soon start swapping? pichets Making pitchers or making hamburgers on the 4th of July, instead of having onion soup on the 14th? The recent announcement that the American conglomerate Vail Resorts had purchased the Crans-Montana resort in Switzerland – its second European acquisition in just two years – certainly indicated, according to some, an imminent Americanization of the Alps.
On the popular SnowHeads forum, ski enthusiasts reacted to the news by sharing fears about everything from doubling of ski pass prices and resort-owned ski schools to the entire vacation culture. alpines undergoing a California-style facelift.
Vail Resorts now owns more than 40 ski resorts worldwide and offers access to more than 40 more through its Epic Pass. Along with the Ikon Pass, owned by Vail rival Alterra Mountain Company, these one-stop season tickets have been blamed for creating an increasingly homogenized and soulless ski experience. Critics also claim that the passes prioritize the needs of urban socialites over locals, leading to price increases for day tickets, parking and accommodation.
More than two million Epic Passes have been sold this winter, according to corporate communications director Jamie Alvarez, and while Alterra doesn’t release Ikon Pass sales figures, this duopoly (the winter sports equivalent of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, according to some) now completely dominates. the American ski market. As Vail and Alterra expand into Europe, there are fears that the rivalry between the two companies – valued at $8bn (£6bn) and around $4bn (£3bn) respectively – could spread to the other side of the Atlantic.
As of 2016, Epic has added several big-name European resorts to its list of destinations, including British favorites like the French Trois Vallées and Verbier in Switzerland. Ikon followed suit in 2019 and now has Zermatt, Kitzbühel and Chamonix on its list of resorts. While neither company publishes data on how many of their U.S.-based customers take advantage of their European offerings, anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of American skiers traveling to Europe has increased in recent years. In April, Forbes published the “Five best reasons to ski in Europe next season”. That same month, the American skier’s bible gunpowder magazine, asked “Why are Americans flocking to Europe for ski trips instead of west?”
However, fears that this influx will change anything are exaggerated, according to those in the know. Currently, only about 2 percent of Crans-Montana’s clientele comes from the United States, according to Bruno Huggler, director of the local tourist office. “We have a thousand or a couple thousand a year,” he says. While he expects this number to grow following the acquisition and the addition of the resort to Epic Pass next season, “even if there is a significant increase, we will remain focused on our core market. The vast majority of our customers, around 80 percent, are Swiss.”
Price increases are also unlikely, explains his colleague Pierre-Henri Mainetti, because, unlike in the United States, in Switzerland the competition is usually further ahead. When it comes to culture, Huggler says, the resort, which grew out of a hotel founded in 1893, “has a 130-year history, so it won’t change.” Furthermore, he says, his American visitors wouldn’t want it that way. “They don’t come to Europe to live like they do in the United States, in the same way that I don’t go to the United States expecting to discover Europe there. “They come to Europe because they want a different experience.”
Fears that European ski resorts will try to imitate the North American business model, which often includes everything from accommodation to bars to ski rental shops owned by a single company, also seem misplaced. In Alpe di Cimbra, a small resort in the Italian region of Trentino, what American visitors appreciate are the family restaurants, according to Daniela Vecchiato, director of the local tourist office. The resort, which is included in the Epic Pass as part of the Skirama region, doesn’t see many tourists from the United States, but for the fifth consecutive season it serves as a European training base for the U.S. men’s ski team.
With athletes, coaches and staff included, there are often hundreds of Americans at the resort, and locals frequently spot famous team faces sliding down its slopes. “We’ve had visits from Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn,” she says. What the team appreciates is that “unlike the places I’ve been to in Canada or the United States, where there are a lot of people, here you can meet the person behind the bar,” adds Vecchiato.
The European resort where American influence is perhaps most obvious is Laax in Switzerland. Their world-class freestyle facilities, originally inspired by those in Mammoth, California, include multiple snowboard parks, an indoor foam pit, and two halfpipes. Alongside these, Café No Name, inspired by a Californian surf shack, serves lattes with oat milk and vegan food, as opposed to cheese fondue.
At the base station, Rocks Resort offers condo-style accommodation and, along with neighboring hotels Riders and Signina, plus most of the bars and restaurants, is owned by the Weisse Arena Gruppe (WAG) of Laax, making it possibly The most vertically integrated resort outside of North America.
Any resemblance is completely deliberate, explains Reto Poltera, who was instrumental in turning Laax into a freestyle powerhouse. The inspiration originally came from “Reto Gurtner, the owner of Laax, who was studying in San Francisco in the ’70s,” he explains. When snowboarding crossed the pond from California in the 1970s, Laax bet big on it to differentiate itself from the competition: it hired Poltera to build the first park in 1992 and invested ₣10 million (£9 million) when it moved to its Current location. .
Ironically, given all the American influence, Laax is independent and not included in either Epic or Ikon Pass. Despite the large sums it spends on snow parks (it costs £2m to prepare them each season), Laax still “has to fight on prices with all the ski areas”. Proof that even at the most American of alpine ski resorts, costs are unlikely to rise any time soon.
