Easter opportunity just slips away

LACK of snow has put the skids on any hopes of another record-breaking year for Scotland's ski resorts, which are now set to miss out on business over the lucrative Easter holidays.

Yesterday, only the CairnGorm Mountain centre was open, with good snow still available on upper areas.

Glenshee, Glencoe and the Lecht are closed until new snow arrives, while Nevis Range has shut during weekdays.

With Easter this year falling over the weekend of 22-25 April, the holidays could come too late to help the resorts.

The situation is a stark contrast to last year's excellent April, when all five resorts were open during Easter which fell over the weekend of 2-5 April.

Until recently, it was hoped this season would match or even better last year's record-breaking figure of 374,789 visitors.

The 2009-10 season opened at CairnGorm on 28 November 2009 and there was still skiing on 21 June, the Summer Solstice.

At the other centres, the season opened in December and continued well into April 2010.

By the end of March this year, 277,316 people had visited the Scottish slopes. Although directly comparable figures are not available, the number is slightly down on last year's record breaking season, which had reached 250,000 by 3 March 2010.

However, numbers so far have already surpassed full-season totals of 159,885 for 2008-9 and 165,089 in 2007-8.

Heather Negus, chairwoman of ski-scotland, said: "Scotland's mountain ski areas have already hosted over 277,000 skiers this winter and we are still skiing.

"The figures are slightly lower than last year's amazing season, but are around 70 per cent up on the previous two winters. We estimate that skiers have already spent at least 28.5 million in and around the ski areas, with over 22.5 million of that spent off the hill in local accommodation, eateries, shops and filling stations."

She added: "Last year conditions were exceptional during April and the Easter weekend which was a bit earlier was absolutely brilliant.

"However it is not quite the same this year. It's a challenge because a lot of people usually come here during the school holidays. A lot of our business comes from holidaymakers and we are going to miss that part of our business in terms of our overall figures.

"Its been a good season but because of the thaw its stopped it being as good as last year or even better.

This week CairnGorm Mountain said its skier numbers for the season have already passed 115,000, with the resort still having good conditions.

Following on from last year, it is the first time in 15 years that the resort had two seasons in succession when numbers surpassed 115,000. The last occasions were in the seasons 1994-5 (211,000) and 1995-6 (187,000).

By this time last year CairnGorm had welcomed 125,000 visitors and another 20,000 took to the slopes during April 2010.

The resort's season actually started earlier this year – on 13 November – and had more than 2,000 skiers that month, followed by over 13,000 skiers in December, compared with 8,000 the previous December.

It had an almost identical number of days lost to bad weather this year as last, but this season the majority were in February and March when CairnGorm might have expected to be busy, including the English half term holidays.

Colin Kirkwood, CairnGorm Mountain marketing executive, said: "All that said, this has still been an exceptional season so far and there is still plenty of good skiing to be had here as we go into the Easter holiday."