Kitzbühel in the Austrian Tirol has announced another big spend this summer on more fast, comfortable lifts with a new gondola featuring 10-passenger cabins and a new high-speed six-seat chairlift under construction and due to open for the 2018-19 ski season later this year.
The € 17.0 million spend on the new lifts and additional snowmaking is part of ongoing upgrades to the resort’s signature Kitzbüheler Horn mountain. These latest improvements began in 2015 with the installation of new snowmaking and continued in winter 2016/17 with a new funslope and kicker line created.
For next winter the new lifts will be upgrades to the 30-year Brunellen and the 50-year Raintalliftes lifts. However, unusually the onus on the new Leitner-built lifts is speed and comfort, rather than a dramatic increase in uplift capacity, as the resort’s operators say they want to maintain a family atmosphere on the Kitzbüheler Horn and not make it too crowded.
Thus the uplift time on the new Brunelle chairlift, which will also feature weather protection hoods, will be more than halved from 8.6 minutes on the old lift to four minutes on the new chair.
The Raintal Symphony gondola offers a new dimension in technology with Pininfarina design and especially new standards in passenger comfort, Kitzbühel report in a statement. These new standards include a wider entry space with sliding doors makes getting in and out easier; ergonomically shaped individual heated seats with leather upholstery. There are also wider seats with more space between the opposite rows of seats and higher, wider cabins overall. The ascent will also be more than two thirds faster with journey time cut from 11.7 minutes to just 3.6 minutes.
The valley and mountain stations in the Pininfarina design are minimalist with shingles, concrete and glass façade, carefully carved into the landscape.
The two new lifts will be put into public operation on 8 December 2018 at 8:30 am and the first users will be able to compete in an open-to- ski race on the Kitzbüheler Horn.
