The Good
- Austrian glaciers are planning their opening, and in the case of a few lucky racers have already started
- Arapahoe Basin still hopes to open for the end of this season
- This has some early thoughts about how Australian resorts might open for their winter season
- All French ski areas are in the ‘green zone’ for déconfinement
- Europe will see ‘social distancing’ on lifts in practice next week when Chamonix reopens the Aiguille du Midi and Montenvers from next week
- Ideas such as ‘no quibble fully-flexible money back guarantees’ introduced by companies like Ski Weekender are the type of innovations that will help draw consumers back in
The Bad
- A poll during a recent webinar from PhocusWright showed most participants think it will take two years for the travel industry to recover
- Our recent survey showed that many British ski companies are under threat of going out of business and was covered by The Telegraph
The Ugly
- The Government’s proposal to introduce a 14-day quarantine that would include Brits returning home from overseas is an illogical and poorly considered move that would destroy any last chance for mainstream travel companies to recover revenue this summer.
[11 May: I note that since I originally wrote this the Government’s incoherent policy has now apparently changed to only apply the quarantine to arrivals at airports and (inexplicably) to exclude France.] - It may not be a coincidence that Britain is a net ‘exporter’ of tourism and stands to benefit by over $30m if all holidays were taken domestically.
- Skiing might be under pressure but be thankful you’re not in the cruise business.
It was reported this week that Norwegian Cruise Lines might go out of business and in the same webinar mentioned above, cruise was considered at most risk in a poll of participants:
