Skiing at the start, new facilities and more foreign customers

Over twenty new ski-lifts, the expansion of the facilities for scheduled snow and the helmet requirement for all those who ski and snowboard. These are some of the novelties that enthusiasts will find at altitude at the opening of the season set for the first weekend of December, the Immaculate Conception weekend. There will be many Italians on the ski slopes, and according to forecasts by Jfc, a tourism marketing company, arrivals of fans from Northern and Eastern Europe are growing. So the ski season promises to be a record one with a turnover of over 12 billion. All attracted by the desire for outdoor activities, the après ski activities such as high-altitude dining, shows and hut entertainment, as well as the desire for relaxation that is shared by 75% of Italians looking for fun, perhaps softer fun.

The start of the season saw a confrontation between the destinations. Triggering them was the announcement by the Madonna di Campiglio ski resort to introduce a "closed number" on the slopes. "It is better to speak of an "ideal number" in order to limit the number of daily skipasses on sale within a certain threshold, less than 5 thousand, on peak days, from 28 December to 5 January 2026 and between 15 and 22 February, during Carnival - explains Bruno Felicetti, director of Madonna di Campiglio cableways -. The goal is to have 14-15 thousand people on the slopes at the same time". Among the destination's seasonal novelties, in addition to a possible pre-opening on the weekend of 22 November, there is Silver Cloud, a brand new fully-automated 10-seater gondola lift with a capacity of 2,300 people per hour that replaces the old two-seater chairlift. Then there is the early opening of the slopes at 7.30 a.m. on 'ideal number' days to facilitate local skiers and owners of second homes, because statistics show that they clear the slopes after a few hours. For the first time, it has been decided to re-open the Vagliana slope in the Grostè area at lunchtime.

Madonna di Campiglio's proposal to limit access on the slopes has not been followed up. On this point, Il Sole 24 Ore questioned the operators of several Alpine ski destinations and no one says they want to go down that road. For some it is a marketing strategy or a publicity move to make Madonna di Campiglio even more elitist, which in the 'Destination Ranking' drawn up by Jfc is in second place, just a few points behind the first.

The largest ski area in Italy, the Dolomiti Superski, has raised the price of ski passes upwards (+3% on average) and is using hi-tech to control crowding on the most critical days. "We rely on digital technology to distribute people over the territory," says Marco Pappalardo, marketing director of the federation of consortia. Theatmaps monitor access and maps at the lifts indicate the most crowded areas so the skier can go to those with less crowds.

This year the ski pass debuts in four areas: Val di Fassa, Alta Badia, San Martino di Castrozza and Alpe Lusia-San Pellegrino. The lift in Campitello di Fassa leading to the Sella Ronda has been replaced by a gondola lift with two carrying and one hauling rope. A development that requires fewer pylons. For the Vialattea, the second most popular ski area in Italy, the season will start on 6 December and end after Easter, daily and weekly increases are between 2 and 5%. Sestrieres, the company that manages the ski-lifts in the district, has recently invested 34 million, mainly to upgrade the systems for the production of programmed snow.