2023-04-19 10:08:08
White bands of snow on Austria’s valley runs, serious ski accidents and little precipitation put tourism in the media limelight several times in the past winter season. Austria’s cable car operators were satisfied on Wednesday at the cable car conference in Innsbruck on the sidelines of the Interalpin trade fair with 47.3 million first-time entries. Chamber of Commerce Association Chairman Abg. Franz Hörl (ÖVP), however, saw the future of skiing secured for at least 50 years.
Hörl cited the strong investments in the industry as an argument and cited his homeland, the Zillertal Arena, as an example. Around 30 million euros will be invested in new buildings there this year: “We would all be bad and irresponsible business people if we didn’t believe that these systems would work in the next 30 or 35 years”. But you have to think regarding what you’re doing in the “peripheral areas,” admitted Hörl.
Erik Wolf, Managing Director of the Cable Car Association, also noted that you can already see “that history is becoming more volatile”. However, the snow situation varied greatly from region to region. At the beginning of the season you had “the best conditions in Carinthia. It was just different in the west”. Regarding serious accidents, Hörl and Wolf unanimously agreed that skiing accidents were tending to decrease. The serious accidents are also due to the “behaviour of the guests”.
With a view to the past winter season, which had started with little snow, Hörl took to the media and was annoyed that the “picture was drawn” that skiing “is not going well at all”. “White bands are a reality,” but in ski areas from 1,500 meters above sea level there was “a continuous snow cover,” said the cable car operator. It is “dangerous” for the industry if it is “constantly” reported that skiing “only lasts ten years anyway” and that it is “ecologically irresponsible”. “It hurts us when our customers have the feeling that they are hurting the environment when they go skiing”. Hörl and Wolf once once more did not want their industry to be placed in the power guzzler corner. After all, only 0.3 percent of Austria’s total energy consumption is used, and the energy consumption of snow-making systems has halved or three times within a generation, they calculated.
In the 2022/2023 winter season, the industry was almost able to build on the pre-Corona level, most ski areas had “overcome the pandemic”. The season was comparable to 2019/2020, when the pandemic broke out towards the end of the season. Wolf noted that the increased ticket prices played a “massive role” especially for Austrian customers, but hardly at all for German and Swiss customers. Overall, however, the guests “did not save”, although the trend was towards day trips.
Wolf and Hörl are optimistic regarding the summer. According to a study by Österreich Werbung (ÖW), 37 percent of Austrians are planning their summer vacation at home. In the meantime, 15 percent of the total turnover is generated in the summer, reports Hörl.
The ÖVP MP recently caused a stir when he announced that he wanted to build a wind turbine in the Zillertal. However, the wind measurements have now shown that the wind strength at the location is “not the yellow of the egg”. He is also struggling with transport problems. He fails at the first curve on the Gerlosbundesstraße and not even on the mountain roads. “The interventions in the high alpine area are underestimated by far”. But he is “seriously” working on the project.
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