Abandoned ski resorts: the soap opera of the future?

On March 28, Pierre-Alexandre Métral will submit his thesis on abandoned ski resorts in France. A phenomenon that is now attracting media attention, at a time when the future of ski resorts is regularly called into question by the consequences of global warming.

” Far from the major Alpine ski areas that have made French skiing famous on an international scale, dozens of small mid-mountain snow stadiums, quite secondary in the unspoken hierarchy of resorts, have been forced to cease operations for good, putting an end to a brief local adventure in ‘white gold ‘”, explains Pierre-Alexandre Métral, geographer at the Pacte laboratory of Grenoble Alpes University and doctoral student at Labex ITTEM.

Do these closures herald a more general decline in downhill skiing, or are they simply part of the ‘ordinary’ dynamics of snow tourism?

To answer these questions, the researcher has carried out an unprecedented census of sites that have been shut down, examining their profiles, the reasons for their closures and the consequences both for the areas concerned and for the ski tourism industry in general, from a “redevelopment” perspective.

More generally, Pierre-Alexandre Métral examines the territorial trajectories of the “après-ski” era – beyond the negative vision of “ghost resorts” that is often peddled – to place these closures in a context of transition for mountain leisure activities.

“The researcher concludes: ” In this way, we can observe the weak signals of the mountain of the future in the ashes of skiing, with closed ski resorts serving as laboratories for the tourism of tomorrow. Not forgetting the question of public policies and support for tourist areas that have decided to give up skiing.

Find out more about Pierre-Alexandre Métral’s thesis and the invitation to his defense on the Labex ITTEM website.

On February 16, the Brut media devoted a report to the researcher’s work in the Lucas Explains series: