Who's going skiing and where - 2021 #postcrisis

[vaud]

It's ok - not as busy as Zermatt (and lacks some of the views)

Depends what you are looking for in your skiiing I guess.

[S100HP]

Pain in the ass to get to also.

[Welshbeef]

Anyone a fan of Gstaad?

££££

[vaud]

In that region of Switzerland, Grimentz/Zinal holds a special charm for a smaller resort. Beautiful village (well, Grimentz is).

I may be biased...

[The_Doc]

Welshbeef said:

Anyone a fan of Gstaad?

££££

I think Rupert and Arabella go there

[JEA1K]

The Matterhorn Glacier is currently open but only accessible from Zermatt and not Cervinia. Looks like Gronergrat and Rothorn are open from 5th Dec.

At least I now know what people were doing skiing up there who I've spotted on the webcam

https://cervinia.panomax.com/plateau-rosa

[JQ]

Feeling quite upbeat at the moment, so booked our hire car and ski rental for our February trip last night. With that in mind I fully expect the French authorities to announce closure of their alpine resorts for the whole season this afternoon

[Marcellus]

JQ said:

Feeling quite upbeat at the moment, so booked our hire car and ski rental for our February trip last night. With that in mind I fully expect the French authorities to announce closure of their alpine resorts for the whole season this afternoon

I’d be surprised as I saw things from the prefecture last week encouraging resorts to plan to open up for the usual dates but with the underlying support of a special chomage (furlough) package for seasonaires.

[S100HP]

VIP ski gone

https://www.vip-chalets.com/

[The_Doc]

Damn they're everywhere!

[S100HP]

The_Doc said:

Damn they're everywhere!

That’s a lot of accom being dumped - 68 chalets or apartments in France, 5 in Austria plus a 60-80 bed hotel. There are going to be a lot of empty buildings in the Alps this winter.

[The_Doc]

I'll bet VIP were leveraged to hell, they seemed to grow at a crazy rate, like a BTL empire.
Anyhow sad, we often let our accom to their seasonnaires
The whole domino setup is coming down

[S100HP]

The_Doc said:

I'll bet VIP were leveraged to hell, they seemed to grow at a crazy rate, like a BTL empire.
Anyhow sad, we often let our accom to their seasonnaires
The whole domino setup is coming down

Speaking with a friend earlier. Apparently VIP were among those members of Sbit who had signed up to the principles of employing staff legally but who were a long way off so it was always going to be a stretch for them to do that and stay profitable.

I think they also got clobbered with a big fine in 2019 after an employment inspection. So Covid may have pushed them over the edge but they were probably already pretty close to this.

Sadly this won’t be the last one.

[JQ]

S100HP said:

The_Doc said:

I'll bet VIP were leveraged to hell, they seemed to grow at a crazy rate, like a BTL empire.
Anyhow sad, we often let our accom to their seasonnaires
The whole domino setup is coming down

Speaking with a friend earlier. Apparently VIP were among those members of Sbit who had signed up to the principles of employing staff legally but who were a long way off so it was always going to be a stretch for them to do that and stay profitable.

I think they also got clobbered with a big fine in 2019 after an employment inspection. So Covid may have pushed them over the edge but they were probably already pretty close to this.

Sadly this won’t be the last one.

Very sad indeed. That's quite a business model, owning all the chalets themselves, are most high end chalet companies operated in a similar fashion? We've used the same company for a number of years (they're the only ones we've used) and they rent out their chalets on behalf of owners, looking to offset some of their costs, they don't own them. Hopefully that stands us in better stead for our chalet still being available next year.

If it's the norm that chalet companies own the chalets, then I presume VIP will be the first of many, as they'll be under significant pressure from the banks.

[S100HP]

JQ said:

S100HP said:

The_Doc said:

I'll bet VIP were leveraged to hell, they seemed to grow at a crazy rate, like a BTL empire.
Anyhow sad, we often let our accom to their seasonnaires
The whole domino setup is coming down

Speaking with a friend earlier. Apparently VIP were among those members of Sbit who had signed up to the principles of employing staff legally but who were a long way off so it was always going to be a stretch for them to do that and stay profitable.

I think they also got clobbered with a big fine in 2019 after an employment inspection. So Covid may have pushed them over the edge but they were probably already pretty close to this.

Sadly this won’t be the last one.

Very sad indeed. That's quite a business model, owning all the chalets themselves, are most high end chalet companies operated in a similar fashion? We've used the same company for a number of years (they're the only ones we've used) and they rent out their chalets on behalf of owners, looking to offset some of their costs, they don't own them. Hopefully that stands us in better stead for our chalet still being available next year.

If it's the norm that chalet companies own the chalets, then I presume VIP will be the first of many, as they'll be under significant pressure from the banks.

They won't own the chalets, they'll be rented from private individuals or companies who own them. You enter contacts to pay an amount per bed for the season (or year round). Typical contracts are 3/5/7 years with a break clause (each forward slash).

[JQ]

S100HP said:

JQ said:

S100HP said:

The_Doc said:

I'll bet VIP were leveraged to hell, they seemed to grow at a crazy rate, like a BTL empire.
Anyhow sad, we often let our accom to their seasonnaires
The whole domino setup is coming down

Speaking with a friend earlier. Apparently VIP were among those members of Sbit who had signed up to the principles of employing staff legally but who were a long way off so it was always going to be a stretch for them to do that and stay profitable.

I think they also got clobbered with a big fine in 2019 after an employment inspection. So Covid may have pushed them over the edge but they were probably already pretty close to this.

Sadly this won’t be the last one.

Very sad indeed. That's quite a business model, owning all the chalets themselves, are most high end chalet companies operated in a similar fashion? We've used the same company for a number of years (they're the only ones we've used) and they rent out their chalets on behalf of owners, looking to offset some of their costs, they don't own them. Hopefully that stands us in better stead for our chalet still being available next year.

If it's the norm that chalet companies own the chalets, then I presume VIP will be the first of many, as they'll be under significant pressure from the banks.

They won't own the chalets, they'll be rented from private individuals or companies who own them. You enter contacts to pay an amount per bed for the season (or year round). Typical contracts are 3/5/7 years with a break clause (each forward slash).

I'm confused (easily done), are you saying VIP didn't own their chalets they just took leases of the chalets they operated? I guess that's even worse - trying to negotiate rent holidays with 60 different landlords, rather than deal with a single bank who also has skin in the game.

[The_Doc]

Most of the VIP chalets were brand new, so I'd guess they were built with either venture capital or investment fund money, with seed capital from VIP as a buy-in and loyalty item.
60 chalets at 0.5 to 0.75 million Euro construction cost. I'd doubt VIP put up all this money themselves. but they might be cleaned out now.

I remember reading Chris Evans' book, when he was "buying" Virgin Radio he raised 80+ million in investment capital but had to put the rest in himself from his cash. He wrote that the business model was fine as long as it was a success, but if the station or plan went sour, his £5million was the last to be repaid and the most at risk.

[EddieSteadyGo]

JQ said:

I'm confused (easily done), are you saying VIP didn't own their chalets they just took leases of the chalets they operated? I guess that's even worse - trying to negotiate rent holidays with 60 different landlords, rather than deal with a single bank who also has skin in the game.

I've not looked in detail, but looking at their main company accounts they don't own the properties.

I suspect they looked at the contracts they had with the property owners, and couldn't see an easy way to get out of paying several million in lease costs for this coming season. Particularly when they would be likely to make very little of the £14m revenue they would have normally generated.

I suspect we will see this company return like a phoenix with the same website, customer contact list etc once they have been able to renege on their contractual agreements.

https://companycheck.co.uk/company/02842310/APS-SE...

[S100HP]

EddieSteadyGo said:

I suspect we will see this company return like a phoenix with the same website, customer contact list etc once they have been able to renege on their contractual agreements.

Exactly what the company I worked for until earlier in the year did. Awful behaviour.

[PurpleTurtle]

EddieSteadyGo said:

I suspect we will see this company return like a phoenix with the same website, customer contact list etc once they have been able to renege on their contractual agreements.

Interesting one ... I guess as soon as a company in any field gets wind that the writing is on the wall then the Directors could be tempted to hive this data off somewhere for future use. Not suggesting that VIP would engage in this, just speaking hypothetically, in response to this post.

Presumably there are GDPR implications in that it is extremely dodgy if a phoenix company were to just start mailshotting 'old' customers from that new entity in, say, 12 months time?