The importance of cross country skiing to ski areas has been measured, in once case at least, by the Swiss University of St Gallen who studied the popularity of cross country skiing at Davos.   Davos has consistently expanded its offer for decades and makes no charge for use of the 110 km network of runs.

Their study found that cross-country-ski guests in Davos generate a total of €78m in extra revenue to the local economy and that 75% of all overnight guests make use of the resort’s cross country ski facilities.   On average, 2000 cross-country skiers use the runs in the Landwassertal valley over their 130 day season. Of the 260,000 cross-country ski days recorded last winter, 200,000 applied to guests who stayed in paid accommodation or in second homes in Davos. The remaining cross-country skiers were day visitors or local people.   The study also found that 15% of winter guests gave cross-country skiing as the main reason for their stay in Davos and a further 60% regard cross-country skiing as a supplementary sport.

 “The survey proves that our guests use cross-country ski tracks and appreciate this added value in comparison to winter-sport resorts that focus purely on downhill skiing,” explained Annemarie Meyer, Davos Klosters Head of Marketing, at a press conference with Swiss Ski.

Veronica adds “Resorts should look closely at this study; it is often argued that other forms of skiing do not bring in the revenue that downhill skiing does, but this study shows that cross country can really contribute, despite not charging a lift pass.   Additionally, as advocated on this site, Responsible Skiing resorts that have a variety of activity options are more sustainable; they can market themselves to a more diverse clientele and they are less reliant on a certain set of weather and snow conditions.   Low impact activities like cross country skiing also require less infrastructure and are therefore much cheaper for resorts to develop.  ”