Morzine & Avoriaz prepare for Le Tour
Monday January 25, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

The Tour de France is big business. It is the third largest sporting event in the world after The Olympic Games and the football World Cup.

Towns, and ski resorts, spend huge amounts of time, money and effort to secure a leg of the Tour. Morzine/Avoriaz has done especially well as they also have a rest day and that means the race is effectively around for 3 days.

As well as the hundreds of thousands of spectators that will line the route in the surrounding mountains there will be the teams, the entourage, the media and the organisers.

"It is fantastic news for the resorts as it will bring in extra business for us and of course the publicity is good too and show people that summer is good here in the mountains too," says a local hotelier, Eric Monne who runs La Bergerie.

However, he also points out that many people will only stay for a couple of days rather than a full week.

It arrives on July 11th and departs on July 13th.  PlanetSKI reported the rumours (that we had confirmed!) here.

Regular readers will know that last summer it passed through Verbier and we reported on it extensively here on PlanetSKI.

See this story on the financial benefits the tour brings.

For a couple of videos from Verbier see the bottom of this article.

Organising committees are meeting regularly, media strategies are being finalised and plans are being laid to keep the roads clear and ensure the safety of the huge crowds that will turn out.  Morzine has seen the Tour pass by many times and has already had experience of gaining one of the tour's rest days too, but that was back in the 1980's.

See the video interview below with the director of the tourist office, Maud Chavanne, on what it means for the resort.

PlanetSKI will have a reporter in Morzine for the Tour de France so look out for that in July.

Hopefully it will be as good as last year in the Swiss Alps.

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