2.32 AM Friday, 29 March 2024
  • City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
  • Dubai 04:56 06:10 12:26 15:53 18:37 19:52
29 March 2024

Ski resorts mirror social change

Published

Greetings from the Austrian Alps, where I find myself playing the role of an exotic piece of hand luggage. While others ski, mine is not to reason why; my lot, as a non-downhill-skier, is just to look at the mountains and opine.

As a definitive outsider in ski resorts, I tend to look at them as barometers of social change and wealth. Instead of a snow report, I offer a dough report.

Lech is, if anything, even more prosperous than last year (it, by the way, the ski resort where bits of the first Bridget Jones's Diary movie was shot). The Austrians have a direct, uninhibited way about them, and the après-ski parties are vigorous and unpretentious. The proportion of Anglophones is, if anything, down on last year. There's a London-based senior executive from Goldman Sachs staying in my hotel (it is impossible not to notice the loud, over-confident children practising giving orders to servants, just like Daddy). But the English-speakers are much more of a minority than last year.

I'd suggest this is an indicator of the way the Germans and Austrians rode out the banking crisis. In general, they have fared better, and feel more prosperous.

I'm also told that the ludicrously expensive French ski resort of Courchevel, which used to be the favourite of investment banking types – and the Russian oligarchs who offered to buy the whole place, of course – is really suffering. Numbers are drastically down on last year, despite good weather for sport (snow report: good; dough report: bad).

I think that the market has finally found a price resistance level. It's taken banking crisis to get there, but the consumer sentiment means that punters are going to cheaper venues for their sport – or not going at all. Whether this is a lagging indicator of investment banking affluence or not, I can't be sure. But I for one am grateful for the extra space.

The writer is a journalist, author and commentator on international business affairs