Posts tagged tamarack
A Ski Resort to Help Build Peace in Russia?
11 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
According to reports, Russia is planning to spend up to $15.5 billion to develop a whole network of ski resorts in the volatile North Caucasus region over the next 10 years. I’ve always liked to believe that skiing can help to bond and bring people together – I’d certainly love to see that happen on a larger scale. The one thing that I wonder about is how many investment banks and private investors will still be willing to put significant sums of money into ski area development, based up on the recent success, or lack thereof, of new resorts (at least here on the North American Continent).
The Montreal Gazette writes:
MOSCOW – Russia aims to build a $15.5 billion ski resort complex in its mainly Muslim North Caucasus region, where an Islamist insurgency claimed the lives of almost 1,000 people last year, a business forum said on Friday.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/
It’s pretty cool, in my opinion, to see a country like Russia pushing ski resort development as a way to stimulate economic growth. Is this something that the US should be looking at, or is it the wrong move at the wrong time, after the failure of Tamarack and the stumbling of Intrawest?
Photo Credit: Flickr user acidka via CC attribution 2.0 license
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The Recession Claims a Resort – RIP Tamarack
32 years ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
I first saw the news on Twitter this past Sunday that Tamarack Resort was finally hitting the end of their financing and having to shut down all operations as of the closing of their lifts today. Now that today has come, I find it very strange to browse through Tamarack’s website and while I see that they have done a good job of noting their closing throughout the site, they still have left all of their site’s content up aside from a couple of PDF links on their home page. I almost of feel like I’m going to an open casket viewing at a funeral…it’s a bit surreal.
Up until now, it has been interesting watching the impact of the current economic issues on the ski resort industry, surprisingly there are resorts that are having a banner year. However, it appears that most of the industry is off by a good chunk and is cutting where possible so that they can withstand what looks to be at least another year of lowered revenues. Personally, I’m fortunate to be working for a company that has it’s finances in control and isn’t burdened with mountains of debt like Tamarack was. Even so, it still hasn’t been smooth sailing as there were a number of people, including a co-worker in my department, let go just over a month ago.
In spite of this, I still think that the winter resort business is in good shape even as our economy bumps along. I know many people that have managed to carve out time and money to take their winter ski or snowboard trip even though it looked like it wouldn’t happen this year. The airfares that were through the roof to start the season have started to come back down. And, truth be told, there’s still nothing like hitting the slopes, whetherit’s an epic powder day or just a quick cruise around the mountain.
In the meantime, RIP Tamarck.
