From The Times, London
April 2, 2007
Free offer: a ski resort of your own
Bojan Pancevski in Vienna
An entire Alpine ski resort is being given away because of the cost of meeting health and safety regulations.
The Erner Galen ski resort in Switzerland, including more than 12 miles (20km) of slopes, three ski-lifts, a chairlift and several artificial snow machines and snow vehicles, is on offer to anyone who can keep it in business.
The sale was announced in a newspaper advertisement posted by Erner county, which owns the resort in the southern canton of Wallis. The advertisement, which said: “We are giving away a part of Wallis,” was widely believed to be an April Fool’s Day prank, but an inquiry from The Times has confirmed that the offer was real.
The county made its decision because of financial problems that meant it could not afford to upgrade the facilities to meet health and safety regulations.
Heinz Seiler, the spokesman for Erner Galen, said that there were no hidden costs and that the resort and its facilities were free of charge. “We are giving away the entire resort, including all the facilities and equipment such as the ski lifts and the snow vehicles. The community needs the resort to survive economically, but it cannot finance its operation.”
The potential new owners must fulfil two conditions: extend the contracts of the 12 employees and undertake to keep the resort in business, which would mean investing more than £600,000 on safety measures.
The slopes of Erner Galen, a picturesque resort near the Italian border, are at an altitude of between 1,200 and 2,300 metres (3,900ft) and have good snow even in warmwinters.
But despite the quality of the slopes and the beautiful surroundings, resort management was unable to attract enough visitors to compete with the traditionally trendy neighbouring resorts such as Zermatt. Business has been slow in the past years, with income hardly covering maintenance costs.
The costs for running the resort are about SwFr520,000 (£218,000), but the last season – the worst on recent record – left management with a deficit of more than £8,000. When the federal authorities demanded that the resort be upgraded, the family threw in the towel.
“We are a family resort,” Mr Seiler said. “We gave up trying to lure the fashionable crowd. But all the prerequisites for winter and summer tourism are there, and with a good PR strategy the new owners could be looking at handsome profits.”
The concession for exploiting the resort is valid until 2017, when it would need to be renewed. It appears, however, that the advertisement was greeted with some scepticism. Several private individuals, but no companies, have expressed interest since it was published in the country’s biggest broad-sheet the Neue Zöercher Zeitung.
“We believe this unorthodox way of finding investors will prove to be successful as soon as people realise the offer is real. We need dynamic operators who will revive Erner Galen and contribute to the local economy,” Mr Seiler said.