The last week has been full of articles in the UK national newspapers about the snow-impoverished slopes of Europe.
As is the way with the ‘News’, there has been a focus on the spectacularly bad looking strips of snow across grass and not much mention that above 1800m, the skiing is not too bad.
‘Misery loves company’, as my nan used to say.
Skiers heading higher
There have been plenty of quotes from tour operators and specialist ski travel agencies about logical increase in demand for higher ski resorts.
In this article by Andrew Ellson in ‘The Times’, the author follows up this theory.
Ask why there is a trend…
The author does not inspire confidence when he notes that Tignes is ‘on a glacier at 2,500m’. He also apparently used Google Trends to back up the theory:
“Google Trends shows that searches for Tignes…are at nearly double the rate of this time last year. There is a similar pattern for Val Thorens.”
As any fule kno, this time last year there was a travel ban between the UK and France between 20 December 2021 and 14 January 2022.
It would be very surprising if there was not a significantly higher number of searches for any French ski resort this season.
Let us just hope that there are no more travel bans, lots more snow and that the only trends are of more British skiers and snowboarders taking holidays at all altitudes…