The number of people skiing has increased steadily for the past 100 years. The ever popular sport was started by the English people visiting the Alps.

Task 1

Where people went skiing, resorts started to spring up and businessmen saw the opportunity to make money and started to expand these. These resorts started to bring in many opputunities for the locaal people to work in.

Employment in these areas has increased drastically. For example, anyone who decides to visit the resort will have to stay in a hotel. These hotels may be run by an out of country firm but many of the employees would be from the surrounding villages. They would need bar staff, waiters, cleaners, chefs, receptionists, caretakers and managers. The same would go for a restaurant, this would need a manager, waiters, cleaners, and chefs. Many of these new properties that have business lead to multiple job opurtunities. Most of the employees would be local and live here all year. However, although up to 95% of the resorts workforce will be local, the skilled,high paid jobs would be taken by foreigners. Also the all year round businesses would change to become specialised in the few months to maximise the opportunity to make money. A normal sports shop would become specialised in a ski hire shop. The shop would have extra staff which again is an advantage to the local people. Also many people will either bring their children or will be first time skiers and will need an instructor. These people charge £100 for a week of training. This means that the ywill again bring in money for the local economy. Many people will leave their children in crèches and these will charge a lot of money again for the local people.

However the catch is that these jobs are ENTIRLY dependant on the weather. People cannot ski if there is no snow. So apart from the ski season which at best is four months, the town will be like a small village. In the winter there can be thousands of people there.

Some people may get replacement jobs in the summer. A ski instructor may become a water skiing intrsuctor. Or the crèche operator may become a teacher. Even so the majority of people will be out of work for eight months. Many may move away but to ...

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This halts the process of depopulation in these alpine areas. Depopulation means that people move out of an area because they feel they have no future there. The young people of the ski village will no tmove out because of the money to be made by the tourism in the area. Also if the people did move out ski resorts will not be able to operate as almost everything relys on humans. The will also not move out on the grounds that there are no facilities in the village. This is because many people attract banks, supermarkets, hotels etc. So this means that the people who move for better facilities don’t need to. But to many people the idea that there is only work for four months is still not good enough. So for this reason many people do still move away. But if they do stay as in many resorts today, during a busy period they will just add to overcrowding.

Because of tourism the area will expience prosperity in their economy. The tourist who come are often on self-catering holidays, this means that will need to buy many items of food, they will spend money in supermarkets and in groceries. They may go to a restaurant, they will spend money there. They will spend money on ski equipment, on ski passes, lift passes and to the hotels. All this will improve the economy. All these jobs mean that people have more money than before. If they have more money their standard of living increases and so they spend more money in the village meaning the economy will prosper.

However there are some down sides to this resort. For example, all this development is not natural. It leads to the environment being destroyed. If the environment is destroyed many animals will lose their habitats and will have to go elsewhere or face dying. Trees will also have to be cleared which again means that animals will be forced to leave.

Another problem that could be faced by the area is the fact that because o fthe increase in the numbers of people, the number of cars and vehicles in the area also increases. This means that air pollution also gets emmited more. This is ironic as this air pollution leads global warming. This leads to the snow line to get higher. If there is less snow then the resort may be open for less time every year and maybe even be closed. This is a disadvantage for the resort.

The other problem is that it can be affected by the present state of the worldwide economy. If people are worried that they may not have enough money, the first thing that they cut is a holiday. As many people who go skiing go as a holiday from abroad. This means that the ywill not go to the resorts. This would be disastrous for the resort as it is the only time of the year they can make money. This means that they would have a bad standard of living for that year. What is more is that the people who do come to the resort will spend less freely than they would normally. This is again due to the fact that the economical situation would make them spend less.

A ski resort has many advantages and disadvantages. These are some of the main ones.