 Poster: A snowHead
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Here are two rather different figures, from organisations professionally involved in our sliding pastimes:
"1.5 million of you the British public visit the mountains to ski & board each year. You spend over 1 billion pounds doing this." That's from the home page of Snow Awards, who are organising industry awards later this year (remember that snowHeads is a nominee.)
But, from the major tour operator Thomson, a friend of mine has found a figure of 1,011,000 from winter 2002/3. Thomson have been doing market research on this for quite a while, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of their raw data shortly.
Presumably some estimation is used in working out any figures like these, because how does one know who's off skiing or boarding every year? Of course you can add up all the package hols sold (but even here, companies can be secretive), but how do you know if an airline passenger is going skiing, or a cross-channel car is carrying boarders (especially if they're renting kit!).
Does anyone have any insights into these things, or any other figures they can quote?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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The French Tourist Board says there were 921,000 skiers in the UK in 2000/2001, 335,000 holidayed in France. So Thomson sound a bit more reasonable.
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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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But what about skiers taking mutiple holidays? I would guess the French see them as separate skiers.
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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 understood that skier visits passed the million mark for the first time last season.
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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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From the Times last October a statement in para 1 that Brit skiing holidays now > 1M. Very close to the Thomson figure so they could be quoting the same source data.
Chalets ~ 250,000. Some other interesting %age increases in the article.
And a forecast that the linked Les Arcs and La Plagne Paradiski area would sell would sell 4.5 M lift passes. That statistic seems incredibly high to me. Something like 225,000 a week through the season if they were all weekly passes (I know some would be day passes) Any idea what the truth is PG ?
Do Les Arcs and La Plagne really cope with something like 100,000 each on the slopes at busy times ? I've only been to LP and it's never seemed that crowded. Fortunately. Is this a case of lies, damned lies and statistics ?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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One pretty reliable count on the number of holidays would be from resort accommodation room nights records but is that actually collated anywhere and broken back into nationalities ? Not every country is strict on registering and reporting guests to the authorities. I'd guess people like Intrawest planning new investments must do the research thoroughly before proceeding. I wonder how ......... 
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