 Poster: A snowHead
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If the credit crunch continues into the season - and assuming we have just as much snow this year as last - do you think less people will travel to ski in scotland. or, is it a case of every cloud has a silver lining and more people will stay and ski in scotland rather than going to the additional expense of skiing abroad?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I suppose it will partly depend on relative snowfalls at points during the season. I would guess that many people who ski in Scotland are living in Scotland - if you live in the south of England it's no cheaper to go to Scotland to ski than to ski in Europe. If Scotland gets good snow there should be no fewer skiers going up there - maybe a few more, as last season's good cover will probably have made them more aware of the potential.
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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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pam w,
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if you live in the south of England it's no cheaper to go to Scotland to ski than to ski in Europe.
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If the financial crisis screws up government finances so badly that the pound falls a lot further this may no longer be true.
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| T Bar wrote: |
pam w,
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if you live in the south of England it's no cheaper to go to Scotland to ski than to ski in Europe.
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If the financial crisis screws up government finances so badly that the pound falls a lot further this may no longer be true. |
That's true enough and the inevitable loss of a few more 'cheap flights' airlines will only exacerbate that.
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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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Have a look at ski pass prices in Scotland.... £80 a day from memory vs 40-60€..
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My perception, as a Scot living in England who has never managed to ski in Scotland except at Braehead  , is that it is just as expensive to ski in Scotland, just as much hassle to get there, and that the conditions and facilities are not likely to be as good. I'd love to try it, but my time is expensive, and conditions are not guaranteed, so if I'm travelling for a 4 day trip, I want 4 full days of good snow rather than 2 spectacular days and 2 which are poor. Over a week or two, this is even more important.
If I lived in Scotland or north of the M62, I'd be able to pop up for a day or over a weekend, but it's a 10 hour drive for me from here, or an hour to the airport, 2 hours waiting, an hour flight, and then either a couple of hours on public transport or another hour or two in a hire car to get to the slopes. Either way, that's about £200 return, plus food and accommodation. I've done long weekends in Austria with flights at £120 and accommodation at €30 pppn B&B in some comfort, and there aren't likely to be any equivalents in Scotland, unfortunately.
Still, I want to do it - but as a last-minute decision based on being in the area anyway (well, within 200 miles or so), rather than as a trip planned 6 months before.
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From what I'm hearing, tour operator bookings to Europe this coming season are considered strong... Thomson/Crystal are saying stronger than this time last year. So the answer, probably, is that it's business as usual and Scotland will get the usual crowd. Travel industry often bucks the trend as folks try to move away from the gloomy news.
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| evilpandas wrote: |
| Have a look at ski pass prices in Scotland.... £80 a day from memory vs 40-60€.. |
From memory ?  When did you last ski in Scotland, the year 2025 maybe ? £27 - £30 per day is about the mark this coming season.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Zillertal Super Ski pass: 6/7 days = €186 (currently £147) for 167 lifts and 639 km of marked piste
Nevis Range: 6 days = £102 for 12 lifts and 20km of marked piste
Cairngorm: 6/7 days = £146 for 16 lifts and 37km of marked piste
You might say it was fairer to compare the Scottish resorts with somewhere of similar size, so how about Rauris - 9 lifts, 30km of piste, and €161 for 6 days (£127).
QED - you get more for your money in the bigger resorts.
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| ousekjarr wrote: |
Zillertal Super Ski pass: 6/7 days = €186 (currently £147) for 167 lifts and 639 km of marked piste
Nevis Range: 6 days = £102 for 12 lifts and 20km of marked piste
Cairngorm: 6/7 days = £146 for 16 lifts and 37km of marked piste
You might say it was fairer to compare the Scottish resorts with somewhere of similar size, so how about Rauris - 9 lifts, 30km of piste, and €161 for 6 days (£127).
QED - you get more for your money in the bigger resorts. |
you get more choice arguably, but you can only be on one lift at any particular moment 
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| ousekjarr wrote: |
| QED - you get more for your money in the bigger resorts. |
Hmmm, so the simple equation for you is mileage = better?
Personally I disagree...
Scotland is what it is, if people are of a positive mind and can deal with real mountain weather and conditions and relatively untamed terrain they are likely to have a great time if the conditions are right but when it comes to the conditions I'd say a last minute decision is advised rather than booking months ahead.
Prices can be cheap too, of the 35 odd days skiing I had last season I ended up doing around 9 days in Scotland from January through to May and all the overnight stops were cheap in my opinion even when booking a family room in Aviemore over the May day bank holiday weekend. IIRC it was £55 for the 4 of us each night in brand new and very comfortable accomodation!
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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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evilpandas, 80 a day??  Do not think so.
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arv, I think he means that it sometimes FEELS like £80 per day.
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you can only be on one lift at any particular moment
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Arno, absolutely, and only on one run at a time. Can't understand mileage freaks.
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You know it makes sense.
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| ousekjarr wrote: |
Zillertal Super Ski pass: 6/7 days = €186 (currently £147) for 167 lifts and 639 km of marked piste
Nevis Range: 6 days = £102 for 12 lifts and 20km of marked piste
Cairngorm: 6/7 days = £146 for 16 lifts and 37km of marked piste
You might say it was fairer to compare the Scottish resorts with somewhere of similar size, so how about Rauris - 9 lifts, 30km of piste, and €161 for 6 days (£127).
QED - you get more for your money in the bigger resorts. |
The CairnGorm 7day tickets are sold as vouchers, they do not have to be used concurrently or like 7 out of 10day tickets that are common, they are valid for the entire season.
For regular skiers and esp those within easy driving range of the ski areas a Season Pass is absolutely the way to go, but move quickly on that one, for CairnGorm and the National Season Pass, prices go up on 1st October.
If you live within 90mins of a ski area, a season pass is even better value , no queuing for passes, totally flexiable, ski what parts of the day you want to when you want to, plus when you have a season pass it encourages you to go more often.
Nine days breaks even on a CairnGorm pass and you get 10% discount on catering (and most retail), and 30% discount on lift tickets at the other four areas (this applies to all areas season passes), not bad for a season that last year started on 1st December and ended with top to middle T-shirt skiing on the 5th of May!
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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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The question is how long you spend on the lifts, how long queueing, and how long it takes to get bored of doing the same runs or areas over and over again. I'd like to do a weekend on each of the Scottish areas, but I doubt whether I'd ever spend a week on any of them, partially because the conditions are likely to be terrible for at least half the time, and partially because I'd have covered every run 3 or 4 times by the end of day 3 if the conditions had allowed it.
I've done small areas where some of the lifts were closed for maintenance, or due to high winds or whatever, and it gets to be like a snowdome - very limited, and the attraction pales after a while, especially when everyone on the mountain is on 1 or 2 runs.
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Poster: A snowHead
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ousekjarr, depending where you are in Cambridgeshire and your train connections either to London or Watford or Crewe, the ScotRail Sleepers provide a great way to travel to Highland Scotland. By travelling overnight you don't waste day time travelling and you only need one nights accommodation (Saturday) to make a weekend out of it.
CairnGorm is the easiest to reach using this option, the Fort William Sleeper is an option for Nevis, but it arrives in Fort William much later than the Inverness sleeper arrives in Aviemore. If pitching for Glenshee or Glencoe the Lowland Glasgow/Edinburgh sleeper could be combined with car hire.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Winterhighland, thanks for the suggestions - unfortunately its a 15 minute drive and then 90 minutes in to central London before I can go anywhere, thanks to Dr Beeching, but I hope to give it a go at some point soon.
The other problem of course is that booking train tickets at 9am on Friday for travel that night isn't the cheapest way to do anything.
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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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current airline panic may have an effect, with potentially far less people wishing to fly with the low-costs and a perhaps inevitable consequence of rising airline prices with everyone else??
in which case i think fuel costs would be a much bigger impact than the so called credit crunch.
Will i stop my holidays in the near future because of the credit crunch?? No.
Will I change my holiday plans in the near future cos flights may cost significantly more than they have done in the past several years?? Yes
As described above, Scotland is well worth the effort, can be up there with the best days you'll ever have, and doable without costing itself out of contention. I moved here 6 years ago, and I aint been abroad on a ski trip since.....
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I think many more alpine ski passes are like that now too - the computer systems make that much easier to manage.
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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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This season I am only taking 2 alpine trips (I took 3 in 2007/8 and 3 in 2006/7) not becuse of lack of money but feel I'm missing out on the season here. My season ticket for Nevis will hopefully be around £220 less a 17.5% discount as I had one last year.
I normaly go mid week and there are no queues what so ever but even at the week end I don't mind waiting 2 or 3 mins for a lift.
One other thing km of piste...
20km of marked piste at Nevis- There are very few piste markers- get the tow up and ski..... even without the back corries it is still possable to find fresh tracks in the afternoon if you know where to look 
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ousekjarr,
2/3 of my colleagues and myself here in Cambridge have decided we might try and drive up for a week-end this winter conditions warrant it. A lot of driving for sure but if we're organised then we should not get too tired and price should be reasonnable.
Do you want me to keep you posted?
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Kruisler, definitely - I'd be happy to take my car and/or do a share of the driving.
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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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My Mistake people... Apologies.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I think there will be a lot more of us from the south doing weekend trips to Scotland this season as the economic situation turns from bad too worse .I certinaly will be thats for sure,The thing I found last season with my planned trips with roga (weekends only) is you have to be able to leave it too the last minute to decide if your going it not.Planning weeks or even a week in advance is really not good,Conditions change so quickly it has to be a Thursday night (are we going ? what do you think ? Sat not bad, Sun Iffy ! ) Ok lets go ) sort of decision making with a lot of the time cancelled at the last minute.
6-7hrs form Mine to Fort William in the dead of night without taking any time off work so it's not that bad for 2 days skiing is it now
Go for it !
Regards Mark
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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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| Topsmoke wrote: |
| I think there will be a lot more of us from the south doing weekend trips to Scotland this season as the economic situation turns from bad too worse .I certinaly will be thats for sure, |
Pleased to hear that mate 
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| The thing I found last season with my planned trips with roga (weekends only) is you have to be able to leave it too the last minute to decide if your going it not.Planning weeks or even a week in advance is really not good,Conditions change so quickly it has to be a Thursday night (are we going ? what do you think ? Sat not bad, Sun Iffy ! ) Ok lets go ) sort of decision making with a lot of the time cancelled at the last minute. |
Yup, IIRC it was particularly frustrating because we were often seeing fantastic conditions during the week then awful weather at the weekend, then another five days of great conditions - very strange how that happened so often but great I'm sure if, unlike me, you could take a few weekdays off or lived close enough to head up at the last minute if a weekend turned out to better than forecast, as also happened a couple of times!
However I should say that on the basis of recent seasons the best months are invariably March and April and the weather tends to be a little bit better too - a few of planned quite far ahead for the Nevis range ski test over the Easter weekend and apart from one day when it was quite stormy it was pretty excellent, culminating in some of the best snow I had anywhere last season at Glencoe on the Easter Monday.
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| 6-7hrs form Mine to Fort William in the dead of night without taking any time off work so it's not that bad for 2 days skiing is it now |
I still can't quite believe we did it so fast, pretty amazing and the memory of driving through a beautiful frozen Glencoe in the morning twilight and the adrenalin rush of seeing the lights of the pisting machines up the mountain in the distance will stay with me for a long time.... and then there was grabbing a very cheap breakfast at Morissons and changing into our kit in their loos - now ye cannae do that in Europe!
Couldn't agree more 
BTW mark, there's another meet up at Gloucester slope planned by Easiski for October - see here
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