When together we are strong
During few years of unlucky weather conditions, some ski stations and their whole village economies were on the brink of default. Like for Chateau-d'Oeux in Charmey (Switzerland), where its village stands at 880 meters altitude and its skiing peaks are only at 1600 meters, due to past years low snow precipitations, its economy suffered the crisis substantially. Also impacted by the strong Swiss Franc which made foreigners having to pay more for their Swiss holidays hence tourism got heavily hit.
Therefore in spring 2017, in South/West Switzerland, 25 ski stations, from 5 cantons, came together and decided to regroup by selling a common seasonal ticket starting from 359CHF (309EUR). By September 2017 about 85'000 people purchased the card, which is 30.5 million CHF, roughly 1.2 milion CHF per station.
This helped enormously the economy because about 43% of annual revenue for ski installations arrived even before the season started.
Also, this "package" spurred many to try new stations, hence spending in hotels and restaurants, this phenomena helped economically also the local economies surrounding ski activities.
Thanks to the high turnover of visitors, ski stations like Crans-Montana counted about 110'000 ski days during the period around Christmas 2017. That is about 10'000/15'0000 skiers per day.
The benefits of collaboration are clear, more visitors is more progress economically speaking, triggers more demand and diverse from usual habitués, so more jobs are created etc etc
The model used in South/West Switzerland with the Magic Pass took is not the first of its kind in Switzerland, lat year Saas-Fee priced its annual seasonal ticket at 222 CHF, by doing so the yearly average number of seasonal ticket jumped from 2'000 to 75'000 and the impact on the economy has been well received.
This was an inspiration for creating the Magic Pass.
Thank you, I hope you are enjoying your ski pass too
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