Skiers told there is no room in the resort

Most chalets in Verbier are empty most of the year. Verbier Tourism

Skiers looking to holiday in the Swiss Alps this winter will have trouble finding accommodation even though there are thousands of empty apartments and chalets in top resorts.

Verbier is a prime example. Of the 28,000 beds in the village, just half are available for let even though they are occupied only a few weeks of the year.

Where the chalets end in Verbier the skiing begins – up the steep slopes high above the centre of the resort.

There is not much land left to build on unless property speculators start encroaching on Verbier’s ski runs.

A square metre of land in the French-speaking resort averages between SFr9,000 ($7,200) and SFr12,000 ($9,700), comparable to Zurich’s famous Bahnhofstrasse or the more fashionable districts of Paris.

Pay the price

At that price it has been easier for speculators and real estate agents to find wealthy buyers for holiday homes than developers willing to invest in hotels.

Of the 28,000 beds in the resort, only 2,000 are in hotels.

The problem, according to Verbier property agent Christophe Sempéré, is that most people who can afford a chalet do not need to rent out their properties when they are not using them, which is on average 49 weeks of the year.

This means that holidaymakers looking for a hotel room or chalet in Verbier are often turned away, even though there are plenty of empty beds in the resort.

Unique situation

Pierre-Yves Délèze of the Verbier tourist office says the scarcity of available accommodation compared to the size of the ski resort puts Verbier in a “unique” situation.

As part of the “Four Valleys” ski region, Verbier provides skiers access to more than 400 kilometres of runs and Délèze says the region’s 94 lifts can transport 70,000 skiers an hour.

“We could increase accommodation by 25 per cent, which means we could go up to as many as 40,000 beds, and we would have no trouble filling them,” Délèze says.

Katherine von Ah, who heads the Swiss Travel Centre in London, says the demand for Verbier through her office’s call centre is often greater than the supply over the Christmas period, the whole month of February and most weekends.

Challenging skiing

The callers, she says, “do not respond too well” when offered a room or apartment in another Swiss resort, since they are attracted by Verbier’s reputation as the resort with the most challenging skiing in the Alps.

“Once a potential guest has received three or four negative answers, he’s going to go somewhere else,” agrees Délèze.

“This means, in the medium term at least, that it is difficult for us to win over new skiers to Verbier, who have the potential to become regular guests.”

Verbier is not the only Swiss resort with a scarcity of beds.

St Moritz, Crans Montana and Flims-Laax-Falera are three major resorts faced with a similar problem.

Empty beds, few skiers

The ski lift companies in these resorts are the big losers since empty beds translate into fewer skiers on the slopes, and the companies are slowly being forced to act.

The cable car company, Téléverbier, has entered into negotiations with property developers to construct hotels in villages surrounding Verbier where the square metre price is half of what it is in the upscale resort.

However, there is a catch. The company will first have to invest millions to build lifts to connect these new hotels with the Verbier ski area.

Sempéré says real estate agents have started discussions with the local authorities and tourism officials to find a solution to the dilemma.

Hurdles

However, he admits the liberal building and ownership laws could prove to be insurmountable hurdles.

Even though there is not much land left in Verbier, Sempéré says there are between 40 and 50 chalets being built this year, and no hotels.

He adds that some existing hotels are even earmarked to be replaced by apartment buildings. “It will make the situation worse,” he admits.

Guglielmo Brentel, president of the Zurich Hotel Association, who has investigated the problem facing Swiss alpine resorts, says Switzerland should follow the Austrian model.

“Cheap loans are given to hotel developers in Austria,” he says. “And in the Tyrol region, it’s not allowed to have a second home for private use only. You are obliged by law to rent them out.”

“We [Swiss resorts] charge tourists a tax for spending the night in a resort but I think it would be better to charge the people who are not spending the night,” he says provocatively.

swissinfo, Dale Bechtel in Verbier

Key facts

Verbier is the centre of the “Four Valleys” ski area in canton Valais.
More than 90 lifts give skiers access to 410 km of ski runs.
The ski slopes go as high as 3,300 metres above sea level (Mont Fort) and down to the village at 1,500 metres.

In brief

Verbier has 28,000 beds, but only 2,000 in hotels, and less than half of those in chalets or apartments are let out.

The demand for accommodation in Verbier, as well as other leading Swiss resorts, is usually greater than the supply during the busy Christmas holidays and in February.

A study conducted among leading resorts in canton Valais found that the annual income of the lift companies based on the number of beds in the resort is highest in Zermatt.

Each bed in Zermatt is worth more than SFr5,185 to the company, compared with only SFr1,199 in Verbier or SFr475 in Crans Montana.