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Partly due to the global recession ski bookings lowered this season.

In spite of excellent early sales coupled with excellent skiing conditions.

This fall in vacationers comes after seven seasons of sequential growth within the skiing industry, and the numbers shrunk from one million two seasons ago to 850000 last winter.

This is partly due to skiers giving their annual ski trip a miss, whilst additional skiers who’d generally have two or more skiing breaks, just had one.

A fall of 15% was felt by the independent travel sector and a handful low cost airlines reducing the number of flights to certain destinations.

Moreover tour operators also saw the numbers reducing by 15%.

Nonetheless, the top 6 tour operators share of the market rested at a healthy 73% and France, and Chamonix in particular, remained the favorite ski destination with 37% of the market.

Because of this several ski operators slashed the number of catered chalets they operate this year.

Catered ski chalets especially will see a fall in holiday makers due to the fact that a luxury catered chalet costs more for the tour operator with regards to chefs and lease if it is empty.

It seems unlikely we will benefit from the type of special offers which were around last year.

Costs are likely to go up, costs are unlikely to increase substantially.

The 2009/10 winter beyond any doubt poses serious issues for an industry which is impacted by the events of the down turn, weakness of the pound, increased fuel costs as well as large fixed operating costs for ski holiday companies.