ABSTRACT
Skiing is perhaps the best known and most developed form of sports tourism. As outlined in Chapter 1, Alpine skiing dates back to the late nineteenth century and by the early decades of the twentieth century a significant tourism industry was in place with Switzerland possessing several clusters of ski resorts serviced by a well-established infrastructure. Today the ski market is extremely large and accounts for a substantial segment of all tourism. The snow-sports market in Britain, for example, breaks down into three categories: inclusive tours or skiing packages (accounting for around 588 000 holidays), independently organized skiing trips (243 000) and school trips (123 000) (Mintel, 2002 b). Skiing accounts for about 20 per cent of the total European holiday market with the European Alps attracting 40–50 million visitors to the 40 000 ski runs (Standeven and De Knop, 1999); while in America the 490 ski resorts attracted 57.3 million skier/snowboarder visits in 2000–001 (Hudson, 2004).
