Inghams has condemned media “scaremongering” over stories which appeared yesterday suggesting many resorts in the French Alps are suffering from poor snow conditions.
The ski specialist’s chief operating officer Paul Carter reacted angrily to reports that an unprecedented draught threatens to ruin tens of thousands of winter holidays.
He pointed out that resorts in France, Switzerland and Italy were forecast to receive their next big snowfalls overnight and over the coming days.
This was following the same shift in weather patterns forecast in the UK, with colder weather and potential snow.
“This is classic scaremongering by certain media unfortunately, and apart from being hugely damaging to the whole ski industry, it is also highly misleading and unnecessarily alarming to customers,” Carter said.
“Whilst it’s true that skiers who travelled early in the season weren’t knee-deep in fresh powder every day, it is equally true that none of our guests have been unable to ski, or had their holidays ‘ruined’ as one paper put it.
“On the contrary, skiers have been enjoying blue-sky days and sunshine on the mountain, and on higher slopes, the huge snowfalls of November provided a lasting base.
“Lower down the mountains, cold temperatures have enabled ski resorts across the Alps to do an absolutely wonderful job with their snow cannons constantly on the go, keeping the majority of their pistes open throughout the last month.”
He added: “I’ve just come back from a couple of days in Lech in Austria, and both the skiing and the ‘winter wonderland’ atmosphere are phenomenal, so it’s deeply disappointing to see the doom-mongers busy trashing the snow conditions, just as they are getting better with each passing day.”