A Verbier ski school that specialises in teaching British holidaymakers with British instructors is being harassed by local rivals trying to force them out of the market, according to its Managing Director, Jon West.
Pressures have been building up since 2004 culminated in police inspections on New Year’s Eve, resulting in disruptions to lessons at one of the busiest times of the year for ski schools.
“Our Altitude Ski and Snowboard School suffers from numerous discriminations. This harms the thousands of British visitors who have made Verbier one of their favourite destinations for winter sports. The British have helped build Verbier’s reputation as one of the world’s great ski resorts, and they do not deserve to be penalised by jealous locals”, said West.
British figure strongly among the school’s 70 instructors, who are also French, Swedish, Dutch, Argentinean and Italian. Some are also Swiss, but they are not local boys from Verbier.
Ski schools run by locals have teamed up with Téléverbier, the company which holds a monopoly on Verbier’s ski lifts, to introduce rules putting Altitude and other schools run by non-locals at a disadvantage, says West. This is in spite of Altitude developing successful children’s summer camps and ski instructor gap courses to respond to Téléverbier’s request to bring more clients to the resort.
Altitude is no longer permitted to meet its classes in the car park in front of the cable-car, as other ski schools run by locals can. Its instructors have been deprived of their reduced-price ski tickets and the Altitude logo does not appear at the lane allowing instructors to go with their private clients to the head of the ski lift queue.
“We told them just before the end of the year that we intended to report them to the Swiss Competition Commission, and a few days later came an inspection on New Year’s Eve with policemen in 3 different locations. The police even forced one of our instructors to get out of a cable-car and leave his class of children inside. It was dangerous,” said West.
“Altitude conforms with all relevant regulations and laws. Our opponents are trying to exclude us from the market.”
Altitude is co-owned by both British and Swiss citizen, Jon West a British citizen resident in Verbier, John Gardner, a British citizen, Yves Guyot, a Swiss from Neuchâtel, André Sommer, a Swiss from Berne resident in Verbier. It started operations in 2002.