 Poster: A snowHead
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@BoardieK, the poster who left the “Tier 4 area” did so before the restrictions of Tier 4 took effect so he could still take a holiday he had previously planned. Sure, it may not be what most of us would do but it was not against the rules when he did it.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I am not sure I see the problem, Switzerland decided it didnt want Brits in case of the variant virus so the Brits left, job done! Probably selfish of the Brits to travel in the first place and against UK advice with quarantine once back home, I wonder if they will conform to UK quarantine requirements!!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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a load of entitled, arrogant yahoos with no sense of personal responsibility and exceedingly low personal standards flee swiss authorities. there's no story here, move on.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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I'm going to wait for the horror/thriller movie that will be surely made about this event.
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I do not see the problem here either ...
Bunch of people decided against listening to medical advice and went skiing anyway, even though it is more than obvious that there is global pandemic taking place and people are dying ...
So, why is anyone surprised when bunch of those same people did something stupid ... again !
There is no vaccine that immunizes against stupidity !
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"The spirit of the rules" is Switzerland say "Come! We don't care if you bring the virus TO US!"
They went. End of story!
Then the Swiss changed their mind and said "Sorry, we regret our earlier decision". Well, that's selfish of THEM!
Still, they "invite" Brits to go home. Right away. Some did. What's there to discuss?
There're some who didn't leave right away. AND leave during a 3 day period when they're not suppose to leave. Well, I "invite" the Swiss to throw the book at them.  But I doubt they would. Because their retroactive decision was pretty low to begin with. So they don't have any moral ground to stand on.
But for everyone who left in the first 24 hrs. Or those leave after the 24, when the Swiss again realized their mistake and suggest they leave. They're in their right to do so! Legally or morally.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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UK rules - not Swiss.
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I'm disappointed in the Guardian who did a long piece with all the "hundreds sneak out" breach of rules and then ended the piece saying the Swiss had made an exception so people could leave. Dishonest fake news!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@Cheapski, people are always dying you tool. 1.3 million die every year from RTAs yet people still get in their cars.
I thought this story was a bit dodgy to start with: how would the authorities manage to keep track of two hundred people so closely in a large resort? How would they know if they had come directly from the UK and not another EU country? Where would they go??
Anyway, despite the hysteria all the Swiss numbers are dropping, even deaths: https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/overview.
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| Ibexman2 wrote: |
| a load of entitled, arrogant yahoos with no sense of personal responsibility and exceedingly low personal standards flee swiss authorities. there's no story here, move on. |
This completely.
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You know it makes sense.
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@boobleblooble,
In Verbier and many other resorts all "commercial" visitors (i.e. not staying with friends/family, etc) have to be declared for tourist tax. It would probably be quite easy for the townhall to tell the tourist office that arrivals and departures, rather than declarations, had to be reported daily and hotels, apartments. etc would have no choice but to comply
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Also, if I recall correctly, Verbier Tourist Office requires the tourist tax report to declare the origin of the tourists as well - to the degree that they had numbers of Welsh and Scots!
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Poster: A snowHead
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@essex, yes, I would! Many of those who left Verbier, would have 're-emerged' in France if they were driving back. I believe that there was/is a curfew in place in France, so people may have had to stay in a French hotel on their way home.
As far as I know, there were no tunnels dug from Switzerland to France during this time.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Love the assumption that the Brits that visit Verbier are rich. I’m not rich, not even a teeny bit. But I love Verbier, so shop around. The weeks before Xmas are usually the most affordable time to go to Verbier. Maybe some of these guys were terrified of the bills they might have run up if forced to stay. I would have been!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| Artois wrote: |
| Love the assumption that the Brits that visit Verbier are rich. I’m not rich, not even a teeny bit. But I love Verbier, so shop around. The weeks before Xmas are usually the most affordable time to go to Verbier. Maybe some of these guys were terrified of the bills they might have run up if forced to stay. I would have been! |
You may not be Bill Gates rich. But if you slide at Verbier, even in the lowest of low season, you are not poor by any stretch of the imagination.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Most of that article is plausible. There is a big 'but' though:
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The truth is, Swiss authorities had no idea where travellers from the UK were residing when they decided to implement a retrospective quarantine on 20 December. |
A while since I have been to Switzerland, but from my recollection, a pretty comprehensive booking in at one's hotel is required on arrival, including production of passport. Thus the police would have had ready access to all UK hotel residents. Not everyone; but a considerable percentage.
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@achilles, Oh I agree with you on that, but it just strikes me as funny that they go from the sensationalism to the more balanced side in the space of under 24 hours! The problem is that I think the damage is done. I've received some pretty racist comments on various snow sports related Facebook pages aimed at the Brits in the last couple of days, saying things like "your people have no respect" and making it clear that to some at least Brits are not welcome. Now I know that some of this sentiment existed already but it's been brought to the forefront and legitimised by idiotic, lazy sensationalised reporting by journalists who really should know better.
Last edited by Then you can post your own questions or snow reports... on Thu 31-12-20 12:22; edited 2 times in total
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@wills_h, with you on that too.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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It’s the same author
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Its all good stuff for the journalists - whether its fake news, quality journalism - if the general public takes notice and responds in any way to either.
I remember asking a you tuber whether they were bothered about the amount of trolling and dislikes they were getting and the answer was that youtube takes any response as an 'interaction' and its all good and all adds to the money they receive. Stoking up the haters by spewing fake news was money in the bank as far as they were concerned.
I reckon its not much different for the newspapers - its all 'interaction' and its all good.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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The whole thing is a bit of a silly season story with a bit of added jeopardy because of the COVID interest. I considered going to CH but wrote it off as I guessed on the shitshow if it was the only country open for skiing business. If I had gone I'd probably have travelled 14 Dec and beaten the retrospective rules. If I'd travelled with honest intent and fallen foul of retrospection then morally I'd have felt no obligation to CH and ultimately done what would have been best for me which was probably travelling home rather than forking out CH hotel rates to be imprisoned.
It was inevitable that CH's decision to go it alone in capturing the Xmas skiing purse would have consequences. It's pretty disgusting they chose to deflect by blaming it on a particular country's nationals but it's something I suspect we'll see for a while having decided to paint a target on ourselves #brexitdividend.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I think suggesting that the Swiss reaction is a brexit dividend is a bit of a leap (or trolling). Far more to do with the fact a new more aggressive strain was discovered in the UK (Still waiting on where case 1 was). Countries all over the World reacted quickly to the news of the new variant whether in the EU, Europe or elsewhere, just as the UK reacted firmly to the Danish mink variant.
A result of world leading genome science in UK and Denmark is the most likely cause of the Swiss reaction after it decided to follow it's one God, money.
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| chocksaway wrote: |
| I think suggesting that the Swiss reaction is a brexit dividend is a bit of a leap . |
Too right. The powers that be in Verbier are all about the CHFs and as Brits make up possibly the greatest net contributor for the inward flow of CHFs, there's now way that they'd stem that flow for some political point scoring on behalf of France and Germany. Switzerland isn't an EU member.
Verbier is genuinely worried about COVID, for obvious reasons.
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You know it makes sense.
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My point was there is no chance UK citizens get political "favours" which might trump any "science". Equally I can't see CH would have had the stones to treat DE citizens the same way with retrospective rules. Again following the money.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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@Mollerski, UK visitors to Verbier are only 20% no? They’d be missed for sure, but they’re not irreplaceable
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Nadenoodlee wrote: |
| @Mollerski, UK visitors to Verbier are only 20% no? They’d be missed for sure, but they’re not irreplaceable |
Didn’t seem like it yesterday 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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It's almost as if the Swiss are aware the economy matters and don't want to destroy it and their society in the vain hope of saving a few, mostly geriatric, lives...
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Nadenoodlee wrote: |
| @Mollerski, UK visitors to Verbier are only 20% no? They’d be missed for sure, but they’re not irreplaceable |
That maybe a visitors figure? The Brit influence in Verbier is far greater than pure visitor numbers. Two of the largest luxury chalet operators are British, pubs, bars, one well known nightclub/hotel and umpteen privately owned chalets.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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It sounds like some of you think that money is the driver here, and you'll receive no objection from me. There is a famous line in sports television programming by one of its gods, Don Ohlmeyer, who said "the answer to all of your questions is money". As blanket statements go, that one is holding up better than most....
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Firstly, now the dust has settled, it's looking like the headlines would have been
'3500 Brits go to Switzerland this Christmas - down from last year'
'Some Brits in Verbier decide to go home early this week after encouragement from authorities'
'12 Brits in Verbier don't get the message to notify authorities before leaving early'
Which, let's face it, would not have generated anything like the same number of clicks versus what the fictional reporting managed to produce. Along with a few people portraying their Moonlight Flit from their hotel as some sort of bold and plucky 'Climb Every Mountain While Singing 'Edelweiss'' drama.
But I would make an observation re the Swiss, which is that I've found many Swiss businesses to be lagging a bit behind the curve in terms of understanding the current landscape for social media and PR. Basically, they don't seem to realise that almost every visitor has a camera and they regularly seem to trip up over obvious measures to limit bad publicity. For example, Téléverbier should have predicted they'd need the simple queue controls they eventually installed in Médran and La Tzoumaz. They weren't expensive or complicated or hard to set up. But no, they put up a few signs and were surprised when visitors didn't comply. Like crowd control anywhere, you need to assume people won't comply and just set things up to enforce it passively. Cue immensely damaging social media posts of non-distanced queuing.
I also find the Swiss like my Father-in-Law. In both cases, you have to engage in a protracted Q&A to get an answer to your underlying query. You won't get told stuff you don't ask about. And this seems to spill over into the provision of information for tourists and visitors. They'll tell you that you need to quarantine, but not that you can opt to return home as long as you inform the authorities. You'll check in to your hotel, but they won't tell you how to reduce the quarantine time by organising a local test and that you can easily do it the next day at a nearby surgery. And so on.
It's a real shame, because they do gat a lot of stuff right and they do try hard to be customer-oriented. But It's a but like they are still operating in the 1970s and haven't quite made the transition.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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@LaForet, You'll check in to your hotel, but they won't tell you how to reduce the quarantine time by organising a local test and that you can easily do it the next day at a nearby surgery.
How much time does a negative test reduce your quarantine ?
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@thunderer Doesn't apply any longer, but at one point it was possible, I understand. I appreciate that hoteliers and rental agents can't be spending all their time looking through all the different websites that are relevant to visitors, but it's more that as a country/business they've not adapted to making announcements alongside all the relevant information to support them. Mind you, a Brit criticising a foreign government for inconsistency and lack of information is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
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Some lady's front bottom journalist decides to make his views known in the Sunday Times. All skiers are evil..
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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This is clearly fiction. We don’t have green runs here.
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Looks like normal bash behaviour 
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