Snow tourism and economic sustainability: the financial situation of ski resorts in Spain

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyse the profitability of ski resorts in Spain and identify its associated determining factors in order to verify whether these are economically sustainable taking into account the internal and external aspects affecting them. To this end, the article first addresses the importance of snow tourism in Spain, before going on to analyse the influence that climate change is having on this type of tourism. A series of economic and structural ratios are then applied to the financial statements of ski resorts in Spain with the aim of establishing a base diagnosis for their situation. Finally, a regression model is estimated, the results of which reveal the more profitable ski resorts at the economic level to be those with the largest stations, a direct relationship being observed between profitability and size. The results also confirm the negative consequences of high indebtedness and the non-significant effects of using snowmaking systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic sustainability
• tourism
• ski resort management
• profitability
• skiing

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Q01
• Z23

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ SABI database is provided by Bureau van Dijk and it is the most comprehensive database existing for Spanish and Portuguese firms (it contains financial data from more than 2,5 millions of Spanish companies).

² The stations of Espot and Port Ainé have been considered a single station since FCG presents their annual accounts jointly.

³ Up until the 2013/2014 season, the Formigal and Panticosa stations appeared in the ATUDEM reports as independent stations, while since the 2014/2015 season they have appeared as a single station. They are treated as such since then in our study.

⁴ The stations of Javalambre and Valdelinares have been considered a single station as their annual accounts are recorded jointly.

⁵ Although the multicollinearity is considered to be high when the VIF is greater than 10 (Kutner, Nachtsheim, and Neter 2004), a traditionally used limit is 5 (Sheather 2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness [Grant id.: TURCOLAB ECO2017-88984-R].