The attendance of Andorra’s ski resorts in January was found satisfying and almost came to the last year level. At the same time, ski resorts lost 25-30% of visitors in December because the lack of snow. It was stated by the President of Association of Tourism of Andorra (Pyrenees), Valérie Lankera.
He also said that occupation of touristic places that belong to Grandvalira resort (Soldeu, El Tarter and Pas de la Casa sectors) is 100% these days. There are weather change and tourist traffic increase since last weekends. At the present time, most of the ski resorts visitors are students who have had vacations since 24th of January (until February 6). Most of them are from Spain, Portugal, France and the United Kingdom. Tourists from the UK preferred Vallnord ski resort (sector Arinsal) before, but the attendance is equal on both resorts this year.
Valérie Lankera also mentioned a change in tourists’ accommodation preferences. Tourists preferred to stay at the hotels of Andorra before, but now rental apartments are more popular, because it is a budget choice.
Economic crisis in Russia results a big outflow of Russian tourists. Around 50 000 tourists from Russia visited slopes in Andorra during two winter months last year. Unfortunately, the number of Russian tourists hardly reaches 10 000 this year.
Ski resorts owners summarize disappointingly: if every tourist spends on an average 150 euros per day plus ski resorts found missing 40 000 tourists this year – amount of daily loss is 6mln euros. Next, we multiply this amount by the average length of stay (10 days). «Arithmetic is easy and results do not appear very optimistic» – summed up Valérie Lankera. Loss of ski resorts’ income that fell short from Russian tourists, is not easy to remedy. Nearby countries have the less influence on profitability, because profit is in direct ratio to the number of spent days. Tourists spend more days in Andorra only if they came from faraway. Andorra is working on other markets development, for example China, but it is a slow process that lasts for years before deliver benefits.
See also Andorra travel guide
