Is the 2020/2021 a non starter?

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My hunch is - in theory there shouldn't be any problem skiing in Feb/Mar/Apr 2021.

BUT - there won't be enough clarity in Oct/Nov to allow the companies involved to commit to running a normal season (e.g. airlines, tour operators, chalet operators, bars, restaurants, ski schools etc).

So for the 2020/21 season people may need to hang on - and then self-drive etc once various resorts start opening their lifts.

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[quote="Haggis_Trap"]

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@mitcva, do remember though that health is not a topic the EU deals with. It has always been the responsibility of the individual jurisdictions.

The one exception is medicines approval, the European Medicines Regulatory Agency recently booted out of London by our government. The test will come as whether they are ready to step up and minimise the time taken to scrutinise and determine requests for clinical trial authorisations and ultimately vaccine or medicine approvals related to Covid-19.

However the EU should have been more involved in coordinating the travel restrictions, since movement of people is very much one of its topics.

And it does look though as if the monetary union (not the same as the EU though there is quite a lot of overlap) has performed poorly. Given countries have given up their own money-issuing banks for the greater cause, in a crisis the European Central Bank should have recognised it has the responsibility to do what country central banks would do in a crisis.

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There has been no "U" in the EU.

Every man for himself, dog-eat-dog...you can choose.

Schengen? Each country abandoned that in turn and imposed their own controls, totally ignoring their Schengen treaty obligations.
Free trade? In the midst of Italy's crisis, when they begged for help with supplies some countries promptly made it illegal to export medical supplies!
Debt crisis? Coronabonds...no further comment needed. The North is perfectly content to see the South in ruination for years, even decades, to come.

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After all it is free

@frejul, agreed, we nearly went for a December ski but in the end plumped for Easter 2021 to see how the land lies. By then I can’t see economies will be still shut down-the social and economic implications would be beyond catastrophic. I’ve just booked (very cheap) EasyJet flights so far and a (refundable) car hire.

@rungsp 'Whatabout?-ism' alive and well and living in Surrey, I see?

A decade of under-investment in the NHS; active rejection of a rise in pay for nurses (cue TOry MPs clapping); ignoring repeated warnings about regional/global pandemic threats; and a hopelessly slow initial response.

And the response? 'But what about the EU, then, eh?' - don't fall for that tired Trumpian response.

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Having read the above, I'm looking at Switzerland now. Or possibly Canada. Not EU, which is looking like it might be chaotic in terms of unlocking. I've been to Austria at least once a season for more than a decade. I'll miss it.

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@LaForet, and you accuse me of what-aboutism when you then say

" A decade of under-investment in the NHS; active rejection of a rise in pay for nurses (cue TOry MPs clapping); ignoring repeated warnings about regional/global pandemic threats; and a hopelessly slow initial response."

You couldn't make it up!

At what point have I defended (indeed even mentioned) the UK as an example...never that's when.

There have been a lot of failings from a lot of different people and institutions...and the lack of "U" in the EU has been one of them.

Unusually I actually agree with @Haggis_Trap on this one:

"Politicians couldn't win this battle : basically given a choice of crashing economy or let millions die."

....though I would question the millions, but his theme is correct.

@LaForet,
I work for a major supermarket group only part time,and make no excuses for them. it beggars belief about the situation. as you say 80% of a food sales is dominated by five corporations.the general public has only themselves to blame. not so long ago every high street would have 3/4 independant grocers, greengrocers and butchers sourcing their products locally.The supermarkets came along cheap and cheerful,shopping all in one convenient place, nice in the short term.
The public buying cheap the end result we end up with no choice.destroying the high street. the supermarkets have the nerve to critise Amazon.The long supply chain does not help, originally brought in looks good on paper.until things go wrong The supermarkets source from wholesalers who buy in massive economies scale. The milk distribution network dominated by a few companies , now leading to milk shortages is prime example.
We have similar situations in our ski equipment sales resulting in many shops closing and this was before COVID 19

You know it makes sense.

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@j b,

A snowHead

^ If we are going to export / import medicines across EU then it makes sense to have common standard ?
Remember that all EU members shared cost of European Medicines Agency : it just happened to be located in London.
As result of Brexit 900 skilled jobs are permanently lost from UK.

Truth of the matter is that Brexit (especially no-deal) is predicted by many to lead to medicine shortages in UK.
Indeed the cost of brexit has, thus far, cost UK far more than its membership contributions ever did.
For what benefit ?

Pharmacists’ concerns about medicine supply as Brexit nears
https://pharmafield.co.uk/pharma_news/pharmacists-concerns-about-medicine-supply-as-brexit-nears/

We need to be told which medicines are at risk in no-deal Brexit
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/aug/26/we-need-to-be-told-which-medicines-are-at-risk-in-no-deal-brexit

What could Brexit mean for our access to medicines?
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/brexit-medicine-shortage.aspx

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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Well, we’ve booked for next year. Mid- March.
11 of us going to Solden for my stag. Accom booked (deposit) and flights via EasyJet.

All confident that we will be skiing in 11 months time. If Europe is still in significant lockdown at that point....well a few hundred quid is going to be the least of our problems!

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Random question. If you fly into Geneva next year but, say France is on lockdown but switzerland isn’t (or vice versus) could you leave the airport by car (or rail) in the non-lockdown country?

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Dear Remainers.

Your side lost the argument nearly four years ago. And then in three subsequent elections. Get over it. Move on.

Let's talk about skiing, which we all love. We can agree on that, surely?

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My landlady in Switzerland booked the apartment for me in Feb for Jan - Mar 2021!
Switzerland are also due to hold a Referendum in mid May on whether to stay in Schengen area. I hope the Swiss leave - then my winter 3 months doesn't count in the Schengen area. (After 1 Jan next year we will be limited to 90 days in 180 in the Schengen area unless one has a long stay visa).
Major consideration will be probable lack of EHIC and replacing with long stay health travel insurance.
And I wonder how much of the government/civil servant machinery is working on anything other than Covid19??

After all it is free

Damn the doom mongers. I’ve booked Tignes for NY with a refundable deal and am on the notification list with Sunweb for the second week of Easter in VT to use my Corona voucher. Hoping for a random week with Snoworks out of school holiday time as am suspecting I’ll have loads of holiday to use up. Kids are booked on trips at half term and the first week of Easter (booked and deposit paid prior to CV). Blind optimism is better than moping around assuming the worst. If there’s no ski season next year then the consequences for ski schools, chalet owners etc would be catastrophic so I’m staying positive.

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The UK death rate appears to be falling (another couple of days and we will have a clearer picture on that). People who died yesterday will on average have been in hospital for 14 days, and will have caught it on average 7 days before that. So they caught it *before* lockdown started. So even before lockdown started the number of people catching a case that was going to kill them was already falling.

If indeed this is the case, the corollary is that this is just an ordinary winter 'flu that was already blowing itself out; which explains why nobody is dying in Wuhan any longer. (Whether the Chinese manage to keep it out of the rest of the country is another matter.)

You know it makes sense.

Remainers remind me of the American politician who lost a senate election and said: "The people have spoken - the Fitzwilliams."

Democracy is a flawed system. But it is better than the alternatives.

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I feel optimistic the ski industry will somehow find a way round Brexit and Covid-19 travel restrictions.

The simple reason is they have to. Climate change and declining interest from young people pose enough of a threat as it is.

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At some point, the emphasis will probably shift from locking-down whole populations, to shielding the most vulnerable parts of those populations. Primary schools may open first, then secondary schools, etc. Given that most skiiers are younger and fitter than the population as a whole, might they be among the first to be let loose?

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I understand the fatigue with political/economic issues but unfortunately, the ski industry lives inside a political and economic framework. So discussions about next season are invariably going to involve these factors. If people sound negative, it's only because we're in the middle of the fallout from three big negatives: Global Heating, Brexit and Coronavirus. On top of an existing trend that the market for ski holidays was already declining. So if you ask 'Is 2020-21 a non-starter?' surely, the predictions at this point in time are going to be predominantly negative? If only because of uncertainty over Brexit's 31.12.2020 and Coronavirus in combination.

So I'm with @RobinS in scoring all the different factors to come out on balance negative, with a lot of Alpine businesses and airlines going under. But I have to say that, counterintuitively, a lot of the finance articles I've seen recently read far more positively i.e. that his isn't a 1929-like recession, and that if governments manage to preserve key industries (of which, surely, tourism is one?) long enough to do a 'warm restart' then indeed, 2021 may be a better season than seems likely now.

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@LaForet, I am with you on that ...

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The underlying problem is that nobody really know what is going to happen, and uncertainty is bad for business. Look at Project Fear in the run up to the Brexit referendum; we were told the UK economy would collapse and unemployment would soar the very moment we voted to leave (George Osborne, May 23, 2016). In the event, the economy boomed and employment reached record highs.

I'm not making light of the problems facing ski resorts - they are all too real, and no doubt post-Brexit deal issues contribute to the uncertainty. The current main problem is how we get out of the lockdown. And until governments across the world start to reveal their plans, we simply won't know. And even then, will these plans, whatever they are, actually work?

One benefit, I suppose, of different countries doing their own thing, is that we might be able to see what works and what doesn't, and make adjustments accordingly. Sweden never really went into lockdown, and Denmark is emerging soon, I gather. There is hope.

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https://www.ft.com/content/d48f0438-7b1b-11ea-af44-daa3def9ae03

From FT, after lockdown

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{Look at Project Fear in the run up to the Brexit referendum; we were told the UK economy would collapse and unemployment would soar the very moment we voted to leave (George Osborne, May 23, 2016). In the event, the economy boomed and employment reached record highs.}

I can't let this misconception pass, I'm afraid.

Loads of people predicted loads of different things, some of which happened, others of which didn't, some of which took a lot longer to happen, some of which weren't as bad but still not good. This is the nature of predictions.

The BoE predicted that the trade £ would devalue - it did, 22%. And this wouldn't be temporary - it is still down 11%. And it would cost us more in imports - it has, £220bn extra to date. And foreign investment would drop - it has, 30% down in the UK vs 48% up in the EU27. And so on.

Employment did indeed reach record highs - with 633,000 job vacancies in the UK at the last 'normal' count. Which makes it all the more inexcusable that the Government was happy to see 10,000 EU nurses and clinicians go home in 2017 alone and have no plan to replace them. And for Tory MPs to cheer and applaud themselves for rejecting the bill to give nurses more pay. The Home Secretary's new points system implemented last week will make it even harder for us to attract them back.

Here's something to cheer us up. I'd love to go back to Zermatt. Special place.

https://www.climber.co.uk/news/news/zermatt-sends-uk-message-of-solidarity/

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Is the 2020/2021 a non starter?

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