Snow business in Bulgaria and Switzerland

The Independent, *with excerpts, 4th December 2006, with

When it comes to winter destinations, Bulgaria and Switzerland are increasingly stealing the show. Stephen Wood finds out why

What Switzerland and Bulgaria have in common is recently becoming more attractive to British skiers. Neither is in the same league as France and Austria; but last season they enjoyed a greater proportional growth in their business with the main UK tour operators - compared with 2004/5 - than any other European destinations. Bulgaria is by far the more intriguing, since its growth is in part a consequence of economic trends and business strategies way beyond its borders. Switzerland's performance seems to be more a case of virtue getting its reward.

The quote about Bulgaria from the Good Skiing Guide is, I admit, misleading. It's from the 1994 edition of the now defunct guide, whose successor, the Great Skiing & Snowboarding Guide, has kinder things to say. A dozen years ago the country provided merely bargain-basement skiing to people who probably did know - from the price they paid - what they were letting themselves in for. In that earlier incarnation as a ski destination, Bulgaria's characteristics included (to take some examples of the 1994 guide's critique) poor piste-grooming, queuing problems, "the same monotonous fodder every day" and a scarcity of loo paper. Just how grim conditions were on skiing's eastern front I can't say - I avoided Bulgaria in that era. Recently, though, it's been too interesting to resist, and last year I visited Bansko, now the country's major international resort.

Why the interest? First because Bulgaria was the place to which many British operators were looking for low-cost holidays, when Andorra began to go up-market. Second because the EUR 130 M transformation of Bansko into a modern, efficient ski area changed Bulgaria's skiing co-ordinates. The 2007 Great Skiing & Snowboarding Guide rates Bansko as the "best-developed ski resort in Eastern Europe". Finally, the resort began to appear in property pages, touted as a suitable place for UK investors to buy residential property. Only last week The Independent property section carried a page of advertising for each of three developments there, offering a total of 684 apartments at prices starting from GBP 18,450.

The secret of Bansko's transformation was the building of a gondola from the outskirts of the town up to the former ski-area base. Those outskirts immediately became a development site for Bansko's new "ski village"; and to arrive there, last December, was to drive into a vast hard-hat area fanning out from a five-star, Kempinski-run hotel at the new gondola base. No matter how generous the terms Bansko's developers offered to attract that hotel, it was a stellar business deal. Even when the new village was mostly mud, the advent of the Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena made Bansko seem a sound proposition. Bizarrely, I have since found myself having to describe the resort to people in the UK who own property there but have never visited it.

The ski area may be well designed and have fast, modern lifts, but it is small and short of challenge for good skiers. It is also not very cheap: with Crystal, the biggest UK ski tour operator, the lowest brochure holiday prices at Bansko are no lower than those at El Tarter in Andorra.

That has not lowered the heat of Bulgaria's ski fever, however. This year the snow-sport news website, www.snow 24.com, has reported from the country about proposed new resorts, extended airport runways, property-value inflation, lift construction and increased visitor numbers. In an exceptional moment of calm, it was revealed that Bansko - which between early 2005 and last summer apparently gave approval for 350 construction projects involving 22,000 beds - had put a brake on further developments, to ensure that there was enough electricity and water to go around.

Maybe the local property market is going to slow, but the number of skiers heading for Bulgaria is set to increase. Together, the Crystal and Thomson brands of the giant tour operator Tui have increased their holiday capacity by 30 per cent this season. Long-term, though, the attraction of Bulgaria seems limited, unless the proposed resorts are built to a very high standard.

Clearly, few parallels can be drawn between Bulgaria and Switzerland as ski destinations. But Switzerland, too, is experiencing a boom in ski-resort property, notably in Verbier: the resort is fast becoming a sort of south-west London in tax exile, thanks to the area's permissive stance on foreigners acquiring resident status. Here, developers have a different approach from those in Bansko, favouring a strategy of piling property low and selling it high: don't look for ₤18,450 apartments in Verbier.

In its skiing, Switzerland is clearly Premiership class, while Bulgaria is more Hackney Marshes on a Sunday morning. There is a whole string of Swiss "grande dame" resorts - St Moritz, Davos, Zermatt - which probably have a better recognition factor worldwide than Bulgaria.
Despite the fact that each of those "grandes dames" has an excellent youth hostel, Switzerland's reputation is as an expensive place to ski; and if you search out a "lowest brochure price" Crystal holiday, you'll find that a week at Wilderswil costs around 15 per cent more than an equivalent holiday in Bansko or Andorra. But quality rarely comes cheap - and Swiss skiing is certainly a quality product. Its tradition of hospitality goes back to Switzerland's earliest days, when major European trade routes passed through the country, and standards are now maintained by its renowned hotel schools. Add to that a century-and-a-half of Alpine tourism and it should be no surprise how good the service is in hotels and resorts.

Out on the slopes, the lift service and the mountain railways are excellent, too. Anyone familiar with Zermatt will be gratified to know that from 15 December a new cable-car will link the Furi and Riffelberg areas, effectively bringing together the resort's 183km of pistes into a single domain.

And then there are the mountains: Switzerland has several of the Alps' landmark sites, including the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau. Everywhere, well-tended villages are surrounded by soaring peaks, often clustered together - as above Saas-Fee - to dramatic effect. True, Switzerland does not have extensive, joined-up skiing of the scale of the Paradiski, Trois Vallees and Espace Killy areas in France - though a part of the mainly French Portes du Soleil domain spreads into Switzerland.

If Switzerland's so good, how come so few Brits go there? Even last season's increase brought its share of the UK ski tour operators' market up to only 5 per cent. But that's misleading. Skiers who make their own travel arrangements don't contribute to it, and Switzerland is a country to which many skiers travel independently, for a variety of reasons. First, there are a lot of scheduled flights (many on low-cost easyJet) from the UK into Switzerland. More than 202 flights per week to Geneva alone and, when the ski season starts, that will increase. Then there are the many Britons who have second homes in Swiss resorts; clearly they don't buy ski packages, and statistically are not treated as skiers. Finally, the predominance of hotel accommodation (as opposed to the apartments), plus the efficiency of the railway network, makes it easy for anyone to create their own ski package.

In a typically discreet way, Switzerland may not be doing too badly after all. They make an odd couple, as ski destinations and in most other respects. One country is a wealthy federation of great age, renowned for its service standards, and historically significant as the venue for the earliest British ski holidays. The other is an impoverished former socialist republic whose low-cost skiing experience "bears no comparison to skiing in the mainstream Alpine countries" according to the Good Skiing Guide, which warns that anyone planning to go there "should first find out what they are letting themselves in for".

What Switzerland and Bulgaria have in common is recently becoming more attractive to British skiers. Neither is in the same league as France and Austria; but last season they enjoyed a greater proportional growth in their business with the main UK tour operators - compared with 2004/5 - than any other European destinations. Bulgaria is by far the more intriguing, since its growth is in part a consequence of economic trends and business strategies way beyond its borders. Switzerland's performance seems to be more a case of virtue getting its reward.
The quote about Bulgaria from the Good Skiing Guide is, I admit, misleading. It's from the 1994 edition of the now defunct guide, whose successor, the Great Skiing & Snowboarding Guide, has kinder things to say. A dozen years ago the country provided merely bargain-basement skiing to people who probably did know - from the price they paid - what they were letting themselves in for. In that earlier incarnation as a ski destination, Bulgaria's characteristics included (to take some examples of the 1994 guide's critique) poor piste-grooming, queuing problems, "the same monotonous fodder every day" and a scarcity of loo paper. More alarmingly, it was said elsewhere that Bulgarian doctors were unimpressed by travel insurance and demanded US dollars up-front before any treatment was undertaken.
Just how grim conditions were on skiing's eastern front I can't say - I avoided Bulgaria in that era. Recently, though, it's been too interesting to resist, and last year I visited Bansko, now the country's major international resort.

Why the interest? First because Bulgaria was the place to which many British operators were looking for low-cost holidays, when Andorra began to go up-market. Second because the EUR 130 M transformation of Bansko into a modern, efficient ski area changed Bulgaria's skiing co-ordinates. The 2007 Great Skiing & Snowboarding Guide still has nothing good to say about Borovets (one of two older resorts, with Pamporovo), but it rates Bansko as the "best-developed ski resort in Eastern Europe". Finally, the resort began to appear in property pages, touted as a suitable place for UK investors to buy residential property. Only last week The Independent property section carried a page of advertising for each of three developments there, offering a total of 684 apartments at prices starting from GBP 18,450
The secret of Bansko's transformation was the building of a gondola from the outskirts of the town up to the former ski-area base. Those outskirts immediately became a development site for Bansko's new "ski village"; and to arrive there, last December, was to drive into a vast hard-hat area fanning out from a five-star, Kempinski-run hotel at the new gondola base. No matter how generous the terms Bansko's developers offered to attract that hotel, it was a stellar business deal. Even when the new village was mostly mud, the advent of the Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena made Bansko seem a sound proposition. Bizarrely, I have since found myself having to describe the resort to people in the UK who own property there but have never visited it.

The ski area may be well designed and have fast, modern lifts, but it is small and short of challenge for good skiers. It is also not very cheap: with Crystal, the biggest UK ski tour operator, the lowest brochure holiday prices at Bansko are no lower than those at El Tarter in Andorra. (To get the really cheap deals - a seven-night package at GBP 295 - you have to go to much-maligned Pamporovo.)

That has not lowered the heat of Bulgaria's ski fever, however. This year the snow-sport news website, www.snow 24.com, has reported from the country about proposed new resorts, extended airport runways, property-value inflation, lift construction and increased visitor numbers. In an exceptional moment of calm, it was revealed that Bansko - which between early 2005 and last summer apparently gave approval for 350 construction projects involving 22,000 beds - had put a brake on further developments, to ensure that there was enough electricity and water to go around.

Maybe the local property market is going to slow, but the number of skiers heading for Bulgaria is set to increase. Together, the Crystal and Thomson brands of the giant tour operator Tui have increased their holiday capacity by 30 per cent this season. Long-term, though, the attraction of Bulgaria seems limited, unless the proposed resorts are built to a very high standard. Currently, there are two resorts (Borovets and Pamporovo) which are routinely dismissed and one which is being feverishly hyped. On my visit to Bansko, admittedly at the height of its upheaval, the main emotion it provoked was nostalgia for Andorra, a place of which I had not previously been very fond.

Clearly, few parallels can be drawn between Bulgaria and Switzerland as ski destinations. But Switzerland, too, is experiencing a boom in ski-resort property, notably in Verbier: the resort is fast becoming a sort of south-west London in tax exile, thanks to the area's permissive stance on foreigners acquiring resident status. Here, developers have a different approach from those in Bansko, favouring a strategy of piling property low and selling it high: don't look for GBP 18,450 apartments in Verbier. (Elsewhere in Switzerland, though, apartments are often better value than they are in France, says the co-editor of the Where to Ski and Snowboard guide, Dave Watts.)


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