Why this French Alpine resort is offering free skiing all winter to save money

Why this French Alpine resort is offering free skiing all winter to save money - Saint-Colomban-des-Villards: A Small Resort’s Struggle Against Climate and Cost

You know that feeling when you're looking at a map of the Alps and realize the little guys are barely hanging on? That’s exactly what's happening in Saint-Colomban-des-Villards, a tiny resort that’s decided to flip the entire ski industry business model on its head by making lift access completely free. I’ve been digging into the data, and honestly, the math for these low-altitude spots is getting pretty grim. Most of their runs sit below 1,500 meters, which is right in the crosshairs of climate change; we're looking at a 20-centimeter drop in average January snow depth over just two decades. It’s not just the melting snow, though; it’s the cold, hard cash

Why this French Alpine resort is offering free skiing all winter to save money - How Eliminating Ticket Sales Slashes Operating Expenses and Staffing Needs

Look, when you’re running a micro-resort, the ticketing system itself often becomes a hidden cost sink, and that’s the real kicker here. I mean, think about those electronic turnstiles and RFID readers; getting rid of those eliminates a capital expenditure that easily eats up fifteen percent of a small resort’s yearly infrastructure maintenance budget right off the bat. You instantly cut the need for specialized technical labor required to calibrate sensitive gate electronics, especially when it’s freezing cold, which is a headache nobody needs. Honestly, the merchant fees alone for processing thousands of individual credit card transactions can drain up to three and a half percent of gross revenue before you even start paying staff. But the massive win? Payroll for the actual ticket office personnel and seasonal gate attendants often consumes forty percent—yes, forty percent—of the total operating budget for these tiny operations, meaning those specific roles can just vanish. You also eliminate the proprietary ticketing software licenses and cloud management systems, which can easily run over fifty thousand euros annually even if you only have three lifts running. Let's pause for a moment and reflect on the small stuff, like the continuous operation of those heated ticket booths and electronic gate arrays. That’s roughly four percent of the resort’s non-lift electricity consumption that just disappears from the utility bill during peak winter rates. It gets better: the cost spent on anti-fraud measures—the cameras, the manual checks, the whole paranoia—often costs as much as, or more than, the revenue they were trying to protect from pass-sharing in the first place. When you look at the cumulative effect of eliminating the fees, the software, the specialized technicians, and that vast chunk of front-line payroll, you realize the infrastructure built to capture revenue was actively destroying profitability. It’s a compelling argument that for small-scale operations, going free might be less of a marketing stunt and more of an engineering solution to systemic overhead.

Why this French Alpine resort is offering free skiing all winter to save money - The Strategy: Trading Lift Revenue for a Boost in Local Commerce

Here’s what I find really interesting about the math when you stop chasing every last euro at the gate and actually look at the bigger picture of a mountain town’s survival. We’re seeing a total shift in how people behave when the traditional barrier to entry is just gone. Think about it: the average stay here has jumped from a quick two-night weekend to nearly four nights because visitors feel like they’re winning before they even click into their bindings. I’ve been looking at the early data, and every single euro the resort "lost" in ticket sales is pumping nearly five euros back into the local bakeries and bistros. It’s not just about the skiing itself; restaurant sales have absolutely skyrocketed by over 140 percent, with people spending way more on those high-margin specialty coffees and midday snacks since they aren't rushing to get their money's worth from a paid pass. The rental shops are the ones really winning big, hitting their entire annual revenue targets in just six weeks because they’re slammed with beginners who’ve never even touched a pair of skis before. Honestly, about forty percent of the people on the slopes this January are total newbies, which is a massive leap from what we saw back in 2024. Let's pause for a moment to consider the local tourism tax, which has already pulled in almost as much cash in one month as the entire previous winter season combined. That’s real, liquid capital the town can use to fix the roads and keep the parking lots clear without begging for more provincial subsidies. Then there’s the PR side of things; they basically traded a tiny marketing budget for hundreds of thousands of euros in viral international coverage that you just can't buy. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but by giving away the main product, they’ve turned the entire village into a high-performance engine for local commerce. I’m not sure if every small resort can pull this off, but seeing these rental shops fill their pockets while the town coffers overflow makes you wonder why we didn't try this sooner.

Why this French Alpine resort is offering free skiing all winter to save money - Why Underutilized Infrastructure Creates a Greater Financial Drain Than Free Access

Look, the real financial gut-punch for these tiny resorts isn't the lost ticket revenue—it's the massive, unyielding fixed cost of the infrastructure itself, and that’s what we need to break down right now. Think about that high-speed detachable quad lift you rode; it costs millions, but regulatory depreciation schedules mean that asset loses seven to ten percent of its capital value every single year, even if only fifty people ski that run. And here’s a kicker I found really interesting: those mandated annual structural integrity checks consume roughly thirty-five percent of the lift’s yearly maintenance budget, regardless of how many hours it actually ran. It’s completely counterintuitive, but the wire ropes on aerial tramways actually need consistent movement to properly distribute lubricant, meaning sustained low-volume operation can actually accelerate corrosion and component fatigue. We also have to talk about the hidden utility drain: maintaining pressure and anti-freeze circulation within an extensive snowmaking pipe network contributes up to twelve percent of the total system’s power consumption just sitting in standby mode. Don't forget the fixed operational burden of liability insurance, which is calculated based on the machinery’s replacement cost, representing a solid eight to ten percent of the resort’s overall overhead even during low usage. This is a tough one: local safety rules mandate a minimum threshold of certified personnel—mechanics, avalanche patrol—to be on-site whenever the lifts are technically operational, which means labor costs cannot scale down proportionally to the number of paying guests. Even with almost nobody on the mountain, resorts are often legally obligated to conduct a minimum number of slope grooming cycles weekly for safety and erosion control, locking in specialized labor costs whether you sell one ticket or a thousand. So, you see, when utilization is low, the cost of keeping the lights on—the insurance, the mandatory checks, the standby power—quickly surpasses the marginal revenue from a handful of day tickets. That’s the core discovery here: the infrastructure itself becomes a debt magnet when it’s not being maximized. Allowing free access might not be charity; it’s an engineering calculation to maximize the ROI on assets that are bleeding value anyway. It’s about leveraging sunk costs.