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Thanks to the down turn ski occupancies fell last ski season.

In spite of cracking early reservations along with fantastic snow.

These falls in holidaymakers comes after six years of successive growth within the snowboarding industry, and the numbers shrunk from 1.05 million in 2008/9 to 950000 last season.

This is partly due to vacationers giving the season a miss, whilst other snowboarders who would normally take two or more ski trips, just took the one.

A fall of 15% was felt by the independent travel sector and several low priced airlines reducing the number of their routes to certain cities.

Tour operators saw their sales falling by about the same amount.

However, the top six tour operators share of the market continued at a healthy 73% and France retained its position as the most popular ski destination with 37% of ski holidays.

Because of this several major operators slashed the no. of ski chalets they operate this year.

The catered chalet markets will witness a a drop in vacationers in light of the fact that a luxury catered chalet costs more in terms of employees and rent when it is not sold.

It remains unlikely we will witness the type of ski offers that were available this year.

And prices are expected to go up, costs probably won’t rise substantially.

Next season without doubt presents grievous problems for the snowboarding industry that is affected by the consequences of the credit crunch, fall in the value of the pound, high costs of fuel and high fixed operating costs for skiing businesses.

This season holidaymakers will become more and more price sensitive, which will contribute to a turnabout of the recent years that witnessed a development in independent travel.