Swiss look beyond the British
Thursday October 29, 2009 - Email this article to a friend

Now let's not exaggerate things, the Swiss still think the British are an important past of their market.  In some places like Verbier, Saas Fee and Zermatt the British make up a significant number of visitors.

Up to 1 in 5 of the tourists in Verbier come from the UK.

St Mortiz and Davos/Kloster are also popular.

However, overall only about 7% of British skiers go to Switzerland compared to 40% in France and 20% in Austria.  Instead of trying to reverse that trend the Swiss Tourism officials seem to have treated the figures as a reality.

Shame because here at PlanetSKi we rate Switzerland rather highly and think it has much more to offer than many people realise.

Poor exchange rateHowever, economic worries in the UK, the poor exchange rate and fears that the British will not come are making Swiss tourism officials look elsewhere.

They have cut spending on marketing and promotions to Britain and are looking at encouraging more Swiss visitors to holiday in their own country and are targeting people closer to home.

The French, Italians, and Austrians.

This winter Switzerland Tourism is investing 20m Swiss francs in promotional campaigns - up 500,000 sfr.

It will also be dipping into the 12m swiss francs it received from the government to deal with the financial crisis.

"We don't see the British market recovering in the near future," says Switzerland Tourism spokesperson, Veronique Kanel.

"The economic crisis has hit other markets, but not as bad as the British," she told Swiss media.

The falling exchange rate has made items at least a third more expensive.

This week a PlanetSKI reporter in Verbier confirmed the high cost of things.

"Borsalino's is about the cheapest Italian/Pizza restaurant in town, yet a margherita costs 16sfr (£9.50) and a standard 4 seasons pizza is  a mouth watering 22 sfr (£13).  These sort of prices are reflected all over town and in nearby resorts too," our reporter says.

"I took my 10 year old son out for a simple pizza and coke while I had a pizza and one glass of house red and it set me back over £30."

However some tourist officials remain upbeat.

Some resorts report bookings for the Christmas, New Year and February school holidays at similar levels to last winter.

Verbier; popular with the British"All the signs are positive," Urs Zenhäusern, media director at Valais Tourism told the Swiss web site, swissinfo .com. "I think we'll have a stable year, or maybe better, but not necessarily a drop."

Swiss ski resorts felt the pinch last winter with overnight stays down by 6.4% compared with 2008.

It comes after a steady increase over the last 5 years and the best winter ever in 2007-2008, with 16 million overnight stays, according to Switzerland Tourism.

In Saas Fee rooms are still available at many 4* and 5* hotels but 90% of apartments and other cheaper accomodation are reported to be almost full.

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