Climate change is “a disaster” for the ski industry with Alpine resorts facing no more than one or two decades more of snow, according to a leading ski operator.
John Mansell, chief operating officer at Hotelplan UK – parent company of ski operator Inghams – issued the warning at an Abta Delivering Sustainable Travel Conference in London, saying: “Ski will be a completely different industry in 10 or 20 years.”
He argued: “Climate change is a disaster for the ski industry. The snow is melting. The average temperature in the Alps is rising. The snow line is receding quickly.
“The ski season is one month shorter than it was in the 1970s. Glaciers are melting – we expect all mountain glaciers to disappear by the end of this century.”
Mansell described “a vicious circle” in which winter temperatures are rising, snow melting, rainfall increasing and washing away more snow, exposing bare rock which heats up and causes additional snow to melt.
He said: “If there is too much rain, the snow becomes unstable and causes avalanches.”
Mansell noted ski resorts are taking drastic action to try to survive. He said: “A lot of resorts are ‘farming’ snow, covering it with reflective sheeting. Others are dragging snow into shaded valleys to save it for the following year, which is expensive and labour intensive.
“Resorts are increasingly using false snow, using snow cannons. That is very expensive and water intensive – 400 litres of water are required to make one cubic metre of snow.”
He warned the conference: “There is going to be no snow quite soon.
“We are seeing new snow-making technology able to make twice as much snow with half as much water.” This could “help us make as much as we can of the time we have left”, he said.
But he insisted Inghams and Hotelplan aim to adapt, saying: “Our goal is to become a sustainable business.”
The company is a signatory to the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, along with 800 other travel and tourism organisations, committing to a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050.
Mansell argued: “We have a massive responsibility to our resorts. A lot of lower-level resorts are going to have a hard time financially. A lot are pivoting to other activities, to walking, biking, climbing, spa breaks.
“We need to pivot to other areas. toward walking year-round, offering holidays in some of the lower resorts and going to other parts of Europe.”