AusLeisure

As of 8th June, Australia's ski resorts have officially opened for the 2013 ski season - aiming to offer up to 16 weeks of winter activities through to the October long weekend on 29th September.

The 2012 ski season was one of the best ever, with record snowfalls across Australia's nine New South Wales and Victorian resorts, more first timers trying Australian ski holidays for the first time, and more Australians choosing to enjoy a snow holiday at home rather than heading to New Zealand.

However, despite resorts having enjoyed pre-season snow, recent poor weather conditions, have meant snowmaking and grooming teams have been working hard to enable resorts to offer limited skiing and boarding for the first weekend of the season.

In time for the season, Perisher has spent $1.65 million in automated snowmaking - taking the resort's investment in snowmaking technology to $22 million over the past seven years.

Thredbo has also extended its snowmaking for 2013, Mt Buller in Victoria has spent $400,000 on the technology while at Hotham Alpine Resort there has been continued investment into the snowmaking system with the addition of more snow guns while a new Pisten Bully 400 Winch Kat has added to the resort's fleet of machines that groom the snow each night in preparation for the following day.

Across both Hotham and Falls Creek, operators Merlin Entertainments have introduced Stage 2 of their RTP ticketing system with the installation of scanning gates at key access lifts on both mountains. Supporting this is the introduction of Snow Pass, a fully automated and reloadable RFID media card for guests replacing paper lift tickets and allowing guests to reload their passes with lift tickets, lessons and equipment hire from a place and at a time that is convenient to them.

With this system, when guests arrive they can avoid the ticket office and head straight to the lifts.

At Thredbo, Charlotte Pass, Selwyn Snowfields and Perisher in New South Wales; to Mount Baw Baw, Lake Mountain, Falls Creek, Mount Hotham and Mount Buller in Victoria; the Australian snow season runs for around 12 to 16 weeks (depending on the weather) with peak snow generally falling during July and August.

Yet, while Australian ski resorts are hoping for a bumper season, climatologists have long predicted the ongoing shrinking of the snow season, with this year expected to be a challenging one for the industry.

Notwithstanding this, on the back of the 2012 ski season, resorts report a surge in bookings and the sale of early bird season passes at record levels.

But Australia is facing strong competition from New Zealand, which is backing a dramatic rise in flights this winter to attract more skiers and snowboarders across the Tasman.

Snow Australia Chief Executive Colin Hackworth highlights that the industry has changed its product offering in recent years, stating that, as a result "instead of going down for a week people might go for a week and three or four weekends."

Hackworth said the industry had been forced to offer the deals to keep Australians on home snow, stating "New Zealand is a big competitor there's no doubt about that but we're taking them head on.

"Unfortunately we don't have the marketing dollars that the New Zealand government provides ... but we're doing our best to combat that."

Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia are adding more than 30,000 seats to from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to Queenstown between July and September.

Between them they will operate up to 30 direct flights per week during winter, compared to nine five years ago.

NZ Ski General Manager Sales and Marketing Craig Douglas explains "we know that the growth of those direct flights is a really good indicator that there's more and more people wanting to come here."

Douglas said a New Zealand ski holiday could be 35% less than an Australian ski holiday and the falling Australian dollar was unlikely to deter travellers.

Recent research by Roy Morgan showed that one in twelve Australian adults, are considering a snow holiday during this ski season, a figure that Snow Australia believes will rise further off the back of further new research by Roy Morgan showing how affordable a domestic skiing trip is.

Roy Morgan Research reports that the average cost of a snow holiday in Australia is $945 per person, compared to $2,802 for New Zealand and a $4,851 for other overseas destinations – dispelling, according to Snow Australia, once and for all the myth that skiing overseas (including New Zealand) is cheaper than skiing in Australia.

The other commonly held belief, which Snow Australia says this research debunks, is that a snow holiday is far more expensive than a non-snow holiday

Roy Morgan Research results also confirm that those people taking local snow escapes claim to feel better, healthier and more optimistic than those enjoying ordinary domestic breaks or those who take overseas ski trips.

This, Snow Australia says, reinforces the long held belief that "going to the snow" is good, simple, healthy fun.

For more information go to www.snowaustralia.com/

Images show snowmaking at Mt Buller (top) and snow falls at Perisher (below).

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