How the ski season will change due to the lockdown
Italians love snow: 71% said they have skied at least once in their lives and 2.5 million [...]
Italians love the snow: 71% said they have skied at least once in their lives, and 2.5 million are regulars on skis and snowboards.
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This year, however, things will be a little different: the second wave of the coronavirus has seriously compromised the ski season Or, at least, that is what it is doing. With many of the mountain resorts in the red zone, lifts closed as well as hotels, skiers are wondering what will become of their ski week.
Not that it is the most serious aspect of the pandemic, let's be clear. But skiing is much more than a sport: it is passion, it is love, it is a contact with nature that stirs emotions. And owners of mountain lifts and hotels are beginning to fear that, throughout 2020-2021, they will have to say goodbye to guests and customers.
What the ski season in Italy will be like
It will be the trend of the epidemic curve that will tell when (and if) the ski season can begin again. The pressure is on, considering the approximately 9 billion of induced income (including 1.2 from plants alone).
Lombardy, Piedmont, Val d'Aosta, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Abruzzo are pressing for the reopening of facilities in total security. Security that could include some rules:
- Limitation on the number of daily attendances (and thus selling a limited number of ski passes each day)
- softer measures in the yellow areas, Reduced capacity in the orange areas (we are talking about the 50%), total closure in red zones
- Full load of the descent to the valley in the event of a blizzard or thunderstorm
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However, the concern of those who manage the facilities is not small. Operating costs are really high, and with a capacity reduced by half, the fear is that earnings will not be sufficient.
The government's decision
Further dampening enthusiasm was the Government who, for the time being, has stated that he does not wanting to reopen the facilities. They will certainly remain closed during the holidays and, most likely, during the rest of the winter season as well: too high a risk of congregation and therefore contagion, not so much on the slopes as in all the places that surround skiing.
Premier Conte's will is to Reaching an agreement with France, Austria and the EU in general to find a common solution and to prevent Italian skiers, with closed facilities, from crossing neighboring borders for the much-loved white tourism.
So what to do? Given the uncertainty of the situation, if you really want to book your ski vacation, the advice is to look for free dates in late ski season, to avoid incurring almost obvious cancellations.
Better to postpone one's skiing week to February-March, or even beyond (there are mountains in Italy, where you can ski until May), taking care to choose refundable/changeable tickets If you are traveling by air. Pay attention to the hotel as well, making sure you choose one that allows you to cancel your reservation even last-minute without incurring penalties.
Can you ski abroad?
You are wondering whether abroad you can ski? Whether you will be able to drive to Slovenia from Milan, or whether you will be able to fly to Austria from Rome? Hard to say at the moment. European countries are still trying to figure out how to move, as the epidemiological curve is problematic just about everywhere. Austria, for example, is planning to reopen for Christmas. Germany would like to do it on December 1, France will decide within 10 days.
Going against the grain, however, is the Switzerland. The only country in the Alps to have opened its lifts, it now allows skiing in Verbier, Crans Montana, Andermatt, Davos and Zermatt. However, it is not certain that Italians will be able to go there: certainly those who are in the red zone will not be able to do so, but even for others the situation is uncertain. Not least because Swiss ski resorts have introduced several restrictions: mask worn from the parking lot, tables of four in restaurants, interpersonal distance of 1.5 meters, and closed-number resorts such as Andermatt (which accepts 1,000 skiers per day, subject to online reservations).
So it will be a decidedly sui generis ski season, full of questions, susceptible to change. It will be at the mercy of contagion trends, of government decisions, but it will not necessarily mean giving up skiing. It will probably just take a little patience and a lot of planning.
What is certain is that if we want to go on vacation, we have only to aim for a destination at the warm and open to tourism such as Malta or the island of Madeira in Portugal, if we can't ski at least we can try to get a little tan while enjoying the sun even in winter.
