Sport

The recent May school vacations in the Netherlands also brought down the curtain on the first post Covid-19 winter sport season. Since the après-ski bars of Austria where one of the first true hotspots of the pandemic back in 2020, it seemed fitting to check back in the European winter sport destinations to see how these popular snow destinations have rebounded in the first season since the virus stilled the ski lifts and shuttered the hotels. Certainly, one the most pandemic-impacted industries, it begged the question as to whether the past nightmarish seasons could be put behind and lure the Dutch skier and snowboarder back to the summit. The Dutch have long been ardent enthusiasts of winter sport and the school vacations in particular are moment of mass exodus from the low countries to the mountainous regions. Coupled with the need to make a second trip to the snow to join up with mates and it is easy to understand why it can be maddening to track down people in this country while the ski lifts are in operation.

Some of the earliest Covid-19 infections in the Netherlands were brought back from the standingroom-only apres-ski bars of Austria. A more recent wave of Delta variant infections was also traced back to skiers who had found their way back to the Austrian Alps in early 2022. Eventually, even Delta yielded and triple- boostered winter sports enthusiasts slowly but surely packed up skis, boot and peanut butter en route to Europe’s beckoning slopes. The resorts were only too keen to welcome the yellow registration invasion and bottles of disinfectant were strategically placed at any conceivable point of human contact.

While swooshing down the slopes would seem to be the perfect recreational sport to practice in the times of an airborne plague, the reality is that a great deal of time is spent in close proximity to others whether it be a gondola hoisting skiers to the top of Alpine run or the crowdedto-the-gills pub in a ski village. So skiing did not get the pass that sports such as cycling or golf did. Most of the demand for winter sport vacations remained penned up until March as the restrictions put in place to stem the tide of the Delta variant melted away. With restrictions such as mandatory quarantines melting away, bookings from the Netherlands to Austria, France and Switzerland were nearly hot enough to melt the snow as the Dutch and NLbased expats looked to get away and strap on their skis and snowboards for a return to near normalcy. While the Covid-19 impacted ski seasons will feel similar to a mountain schnapps induced hangover, the 2022 season did signal a return to established order as the traffic to the popular ski destinations rebounded and in some cases surged. Austria, the traditional #1 destination, accounting for some 60% of the market, once again saw the reservation ledgers swell with Dutch names and the tourist bureaux of France and Switzerland reported similar results. As expected, the overall numbers were down in comparison to pre Covid-19 figures, but the trend indicated that the demand for winter sport holidays will recover fully as early as next season.

Perhaps no better display of the resilience of the Dutch winter sport market was the end-of-season Dutch Week in the Savoy region of France. Val Thorens, which many of us have been mispronouncing all our lives (the ‘s’ is not silent), was host to yet another edition of the venerable party / ski vacation week entitled “Dutch Week”, complete with appropriate musical entertainment and plenty of beer to keep the revelers moving long after the ski lifts have come to a halt. The Dutch Weeks have become a fixture and are now offered annually at several locations throughout the popular European winter sport areas.

Solid booking numbers are already being reported for the 2022-23 season which opens later this year. To be sure, the has been significant damage despite government support. In the French town of Moûtiers (bonus points for pronouncing it correctly), which is at the base of the climb into one of the Savoy’s most popular winter destinations, shuttered shop windows indicated that the pesky bug had taken its toll. Sales of local cheese, sausage and pricey wine had taken a hit. However, if the Dutch have anything to say about the matter, the winter demand for croissants, beer and fondue will not suffer in the long run…look out below!

Written by John Mahnen