Where to Ski And Snowboard - Brexit no barrier for keen skiers

Brexit no barrier for keen skiers

27th September 2016, by Abi Butcher

Sales of ski holidays are up on last year — despite financial uncertainty

Sales of ski holidays are still buoyant as we head into October, despite uncertainty caused by Brexit and wobbly exchange rates.

Yesterday, managing director of Le Ski, Nick Morgan, told us that year on year, booking is up 16% on 2015 — the company’s busiest booking year before now.

“This has been the busiest early booking period we’ve ever known. We suspect people are thinking that it’s best to simply forget what’s going on around them and just go skiing!” said Nick.

“We can’t point to a precise reason why bookings are so strong apart from the fact we do make our guests very happy. We get 77% repeat or recommendations over the season. So almost four in five of our guests every single week have either skied with us before or have been recommended to us by someone who has.”

Earlier this month Frontier Ski informed us that bookings for Whistler were up 9% year on year at the end of August, and Ski Solutions, which this year celebrates 30 years in the business, says advance bookings are up 25% on this time last year.

Ski Solutions’ managing director Craig Burton said: “The message from us is ‘so far so good’. We believe that our core skiers will always find a way to ski, despite the political or economic climate. The increase in demand this year for secondary ski short breaks, is a perfect example of this.

“Despite the predicted doom and gloom, our advanced bookings to Europe and North America are materially ahead of where they were this time last year, with departures for this winter up by 25%.”

Earlier this month, the Ski Club of Great Britain announced that in a survey of more than 17,000 people this summer, 65% of skiers said they would not change their holiday habits for the next three years, despite exchange rate fluctuations and ensuing uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

A further 28% said their activity would increase, and just 7% said they would go on fewer ski holidays.

“It seems people who ski will continue to ski,” surmised the report.