Surely they could run just one or two lifts to service the guests who can still come? What am I missing here?
risk/reward just didn't stack up for them. the resort mgt boards are gov agencies that exist to enable and encourage people to use the resorts. they are supposed to break even. I heard a rumour that may be getting extra gov support this year, but can't confirm. the risk/reward equation is quite different I suspect (certainly don't know) that they may also have contracts that could be difficult to break. So may as well get some value out of them
Agree with that - that's the initial disappointment. But then you have to move on and look at it like the woman from Hoys in the afr article. Shit happens. Deal with it. Crying into your beer doesn't solve the problem. I've scarcely had a year in the 15 I've been here when shit hasn't happened. I think you have to be very resilient in this game. Mentally tough. If not, you're not going to survive.
The bigger issue is the complete incompetence of the vic state government. The frustration is that this could of been prevented...and as a result through no fault of our own we are being massively impacted.
And you look at it from the perspective that businesses in Melbourne are under similar strain. Not that they had to contend with the fires, etc.
This. My parents were involved in the ski industry at Hotham for ten years before they realised that the only way to make a small fortune in the ski industry was start with a larger fortune, which they didn't have - and so the entire thing was a misguided fiasco from the start. And if you can't make a buck, you do what my parents (and Vail) did and pull the plug. It was very surprising (for me) and ambitious to even contemplate getting the lifts spinning this year, so good on them for at least trying. I'd be extremely surprised, astonished, if the other three remaining operating resorts make it through the season without following suit. This virus is just a bugger, and whilst it was nice to believe for a bit that we had it beat, we are still in the very earliest stages of a pandemic which isn't going away any time soon. Hopefully there'll be some fun and interesting BC adventures ASAP.
Whilst it's comforting to blame governments, the only way of stopping this virus is to maintain proper SD etc etc. I didn't see any of that happening last week up at Hotham, a few cursory steps is all, and when I got back to Melbourne on Wednesday night before lockdown, it was like one giant party in the streets as everyone headed out for one last hurrah. I bet you a slab (can even see it on the snow cams!) that there's no real meaningful effort to retard the virus up at the resorts, so its only a matter of time. If you really want to stop transmission, you need to do things properly - as if your life depended on it like we do in clinical settings every day. If you want to blame anything, blame the human condition.
Look at industry social media feeds, they are full of old and new images where people aren't social distancing. Though, Thredbo and Perisher have just started in the last couple of days putting out stuff which is innovative, clearly messaged and not just a token listing of standard guidelines.
Yes I hope so too but I am mentally preparing myself for no more skiing of any sort in 2020. :-0 Even bush walking and surfing will be tricky to accomplish between now and Sept. . City Living is dodgy!!
If you have an EAP and were thinking of keeping it to ski Falls or Hotham, you really need to read the changes made today https://www.ski.com.au/xf/threads/e...tant-for-vic-pass-holders.88025/#post-4356937
Lol, I got a little email last night that indicated they have dug a massive hole. Honestly. poor buggers, I feel for them. A website that was not set up properly (probably because the northern hemisphere staff got let go), changing government regulations and a virus that, like any virus goes "winter, lets paaaaarty!". Oh, and also getting decisions made for you on the other side of the planet - that kind of sucks. You can tell that is happening as the businesses and clubs around the hill are no longer being consulted or given time to prepare a response.
The KosciuszkoExpress Quad (Australia's longest lift) runs all year doesn't it? Always I observe with very few customers on the seats outside ski season.
i remain surprised there ever has been a ski season with a sort-of economy on the hottest, driest, flattest inhabited continent......how ever anyone can run a business in 8-12 weeks a year blows my tiny mind.....anyway when my FIL - maybe like others here - and other families started and built lodges etc it was all on elbow grease and effort, trust, no internal walls, a gas choofer stove, and no expectation of skiing groomers day in day out, and snow cover year in year out. even in my 20 short years of involvement in hotham ive seen these expectations change incredibly. The abuse i see hurled on the hotham facebook site by entitled fwts.....when it became about money, it became about money, and so here we are.
Our conditions really do warrant a club field (NZ) style arrangement rather than a Vail bells and whistles set up.
That's easy to say, but the small resorts and club fields in Australia don't tend to do very well. I'm fairly confident that most people in these forums only know about the five big resorts, perhaps a small resort in their own state and few could mention any Australian club fields, past or present (hint, there's one not far from Hotham). People in this country want big resorts, so that's what the market provides. If people wanted club fields then Cabramurra wouldn't have closed down and Rodway, Australia's steepest ski lift, wouldn't have so few riders.
yeah so i looked back at the bank account and yeah i now have 2 epic passes for perisher, and i live in vic. ah well....
today, yes i think they do, but that has been cultivated over time. i think buller was first, perhaps?
People come to expect what is in front of them. Had things been ‘developed’ differently in the past it could be a completely changed model for Australian skiing.
Why they (RMB) even have a marketing budget and take on this role of promotion is a little perplexing...
The first 40 years of Buller are a case of demand always heavily exceeding supply. So it just kept on expanding as fast as conditions allowed. Briefly, the Buller Chalet was built in 1929. If you know anything about economic history you'd think that was bad timing as the Great Depression started that year. But no, the place was always over booked. So they extended it circa 1932 when no one was spending on holidays, but it was still booked out for the whole ski season, so it was extended twice more in subsequent years until it had 80 or 90 beds when it burnt down in c.1942. After the war finished in 1945, with only one legal ski hut, a squatter village developed, so they permitted 3 or 4 lodges to built around 1947. They were instantly full. So in 1949 they did a subdivision for another 21 lodges. All those were taken on the day applications opened and many groups didn't get their building site. So a few years later more lots were made available... and so on. No matter what else happened, no matter how many other resorts and club fields were permitted, Buller would always have grown into a fully fledged ski resort by the early 1950s. Hotham's more sedate development is due to many reasons that didn't affect Buller such as extra distance from Melbourne, the road not being cleared until c.1958 and the fact that the lift company was under capitalised, so they couldn't build much until 1969 when it was sold to a more cashed up owner.
"Son when I first built this chalet people said I was mad to build it in swamp. So It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one and that sank into the swamp. So I built a third one and that burnt down , keeled over and then sank into the swamp but this one stayed up and this is one you are getting...."
Umm, Thredbo is actually pretty busy year round and Easter can be as big as winter. Kosi Express is used for MTB and hiking in the green season and I've seen queues longer than during the ski season.
Lessees shouldn't be paying for that, sick of RMB blowing the marketing budget and whacking us. It's akin to xyz council running a marketing campaign "come live in our municipality" and slugging the (existing) ratepayers for the blown marketing budget. One may rebut by saying it's no different from promoting the great ocean road - difference is that cost is smeared across the whole state's taxpayers, rather than being recovered from a relatively small pool.
Well arguably local tourism in the regions is primarily funded by the LGAs and business organisations, in addition to some from the state govt. The burden of local marketing campaigns will always primarily rest with the local taxpayer. After all, the community gets the economic benefits of tourism.
Yeah, the RMBs are effectively the local councils for tourist towns. In a tourist town almost everyone benefits from promoting tourism, so of course the RMBs should spend a bit on marketing to ensure that the tourists that everyone relies on keep on coming.
I wonder what the breakdown is for tourism funding - business vs LGA vs state? A contrast to city LGAs, whose role is largely thought of as cleaning the streets and collecting the bins.. Highly political maybe, but perhaps a more equitable approach is give Falls & Hotham back to the Alpine shire, meaning a larger pool of residents to smear the marketing budget across and promote the region as a whole...
Not a bad idea for funding Falls and Hotham services, I suspect as per most aspects of life, the good citizens of Alpine Shire enjoy the benefits of proximity to both resorts but don’t wish to fund them - at least no further than the costs of visiting. The obvious negative with this model is the lack of green season income. The risk to integrating with the Shire is potentially being run into the ground over summer if no’s. Didn’t take off. It’s not inconceivable winter services could be reduced too if the Shire scoped out profits to lift their valley economy?
There is a limit to how effective marketing can be when there are fires and weather too hot for mtbiking , Corona, poor snow . Uncertainty about lifts and clusterfark ski ticket booking didnt help . Besides Bright is a madhouse over Xmas New year anyway , locals usually would avoid it.
Flip side is those in the Alp shire benefit hugely from tourism in winter (all those skiers stopping for wines, food, equip, hire, fuel etc) - arguably some portion of that is due to marketing that their LGA isn't paying for...
They (Shire) sure do. I bet it’s a huge advantage being gatekeeper / tollkeeper and marketing a range of adventures ‘one‘ doesn’t have to pay for! Compare this with Bass Coast, Surf Coast or Colac-Otway Shires where many services and facilities Along the popular beaches are hinterland are actually funded by the council with some State funding (I believe). Im no economist but I think the model is externalise costs/ internalise profits. Just look at the Uber & Air BnB model...?
Naturally - if you can get benefit that you don't have to pay for... I'm not sure you can compare public-finance (i.e. LGAs) with the modern slavery that is uber/air bnb...
IIRC dinner plain rates are quarantined so that they don't just get syphoned off to fund stuff elsewhere in the shire. i suspect that if the alpine resorts were ever put under LGA mgt, something similar would happen. I doubt that there would be much saving for leaseholders. meanwhile, the alpine resorts are supposed to find some efficiencies in working together. hard to see too much scope.
There is certainly a perception that RMBs are wasteful and inefficient - a perception that isn't going away anytime soon, especially for hard-hit businesses that can't escape the service charge (dwarfs the site rental by a long way).
I didn't say they couldn't be more efficient, i just doubt that sharing/cooperation with other RMBs will help. Eg Adjoining LGAs can share plant but it's not very practical for resorts
Lots of negative at vail - they would have been massively criticised for being open and encouraging people to travel
Using the NZ (ie Qwtn and Wanaka), Alpine Shire could be proactive with scheduling shuttles from MT Beauty and Bright to the resorts. I guess Hoys and Pyles have the monopoly on these routes? But some council-funded Shuttles could increase bus frequency and help get traffic of the road - a plus in a normal year, esp. mid winter on Hotham when the road is treacherous. In The Green season Alpine Shire get find the odd Mtn access bus for Razorback Walkers and Road cyclists. Just a thought.
Encouraging who to travel? People need to start doing the right thing, this kinda BS is reason there is no ski season for many people and why we can’t get back to some kinda normal.
We Mexicans don't have enough snow this season. Last Season in 2019 in August you could XC BC ski anywhere on the Baw Baw Plateaux and the BHP. The cover was over 1 metre deep .The Plague just makes things worse :-0
Encouraging L those that have been forced to stay home, which population wise is probably half the state
