Am I right in thinking that Gstaad is like the Aspen of Switzerland, one of the richest ski resort towns? Is this why they can get away with helicoptering in snow?
Switzerland is a rich country, and just about every ski resort is outrageously expensive (think 14 euro for a beer, 35 for a pizza, 150+/night for a hotel, 50+/day slopes). So financially, they can definitely get away with helicoptering in snow.
The most exclusive ones are probably St. Moritz, Zermatt and Lech, not so sure about Gstaad.
When you listed your prices, I was awed by the expense of the beer and pizza, but once you got to the hotels and ski pass, the prices look very reasonable for the US. I pulled up Snowbird in Salt Lake City, Utah which has some of the best skiing in the US and not even fancy like Aspen, Colorado. A hotel up there on a Wednesday in two weeks is 454USD per night. Lift tickets are 142USD per day.
Blows my mind. When I skied there in college in 2012, they were roughly 60-80USD per day and they had free ski between 1500-1700.
Other than the pizza and beer, I challenge you to find a ski resort in Colorado/Utah much cheaper than the prices you listed. It's crazy here in the US.
I'll be spending a week skiing in Austria next week and altogether it's cheaper than a week of skiing in Colorado.
Gstaad is 'exclusive'. It probably isn't so well known, but it has very expensive resorts and hotels, like https://www.thealpinagstaad.ch/ and its own private bank https://www.saanenbank.ch/ and the centre of the village has a lot of luxury shopping. It is definitely up there in terms of destinations for UHNW people. However I don't think it attracts quite such a percentage of "can afford to go but not ultra high net worth" people, which is much more true of Zermatt, Verbier, St Moritz etc.
There are a lot of Aspens in Switzerland. But seriously, I hope there will be consequences. Everyone in my bubble disapproves this strongly. Yes, there is not much snow. Yes, it is crippling snow tourism. But I can't imagine there are a lot of Swiss people who think that flying in snow is justified in any way.
I do not live in Switzerland anymore, so I cannot do a survey, but I can tell you helicopters are used an absurd amount in Switzerland, and everyone seems fine with it. For instance I personally saw, with my own eyes, helicopters used to:
- install an AC unit on the roof of a university building
- move building material from one side of campus to the other side
- extract dead trees from a small forest with an extensive network of roads and paths
- plant trees in the middle of campus. Which lead to this fantastic exchange with my then 2 yo: "look papa, a flying tree!" "What do you mean?" "There!" "Oh, you are right. A flying tree. Do you want a banana?"
My pet theory is that given the high wages in Switzerland, it quickly becomes cheaper to rent a chopper for two hours then to get a crane built, operated and unbuilt.
It's not cheap but in many cases it's the only way, logging on steep hills or supplies for very remote regions etc.. Only 50% of what Air Zermatt does is rescue.
> But I can't imagine there are a lot of Swiss people who think that flying in snow is justified in any way.
I just got back from skiing in Vail Colorado. People in Europe may object to flying snow to the mountain, but they certainly do not object to flying themselves to the snow.
In the shared gondola and lift rides, people speaking English within their groups were the minority. I am not complaining, it was a wonderful time and I really enjoyed meeting and talking to people from all over the place!
FYI - the storm systems that are flooding California are producing an epic winter for the ski resorts in the western USA. It's been at least 20 years since I've seen anything this nice! It's really not a surprise that people are coming from around the world to experience it.
Yeah it's nuts here in western USA. We've gotten over 200 inches of snow here in Park City Utah and I saw like 10 dump trucks full of snow hauling it away just walking to the grocery store yesterday.
