Slow business with no snow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Klosters. Everywhere you go the festive season is evident. Fairy lights twinkle in the trees that hug the Swiss ski resort's main shopping street, Bahnhofstrasse.

Illuminated Santas can be spied abseiling down the front of the chalets nestling at the foot of the glowering mountains. Wickerwork reindeer graze in shop windows.

And yet something is missing: snow. The only white stuff to be found in the town is of the spray-on variety. Snow shovels and sledges stand idly outside hardware stores waiting forlornly for customers, like the last turkeys in the shop. Snowgear outlets are offering 30 per cent off snowshoes.

"I was 5 the last time we had a start to a season like this," said Carina, a 31-year-old shopkeeper.

Up high, the snow cannons are spewing out fake snow, but lower down it melts too quickly to make the artificial option viable. Only two of the resort's five mountains have managed to open and they offer just a few runs.

It is a far cry from last year, when Klosters opened for business on November 6.

"It was the driest November here for 150 years, since records began," conceded Markus Unterfinger, head of communications for the resort. "And we've had the lowest amount of rainfall for a whole autumn since 1957."

The acute absence of snow has given the town a quiet, contemplative air. On Saturday there were no shoppers to be found in its elegant boutiques and jewellery shops. Ski hire staff paced around waiting for customers. The Rolex concession was doing little business.

In the Swiss Ski and Snowboard School, its assistant director, Christian Rogantini, was putting on a brave face. "There is not much snow but the conditions are awesome; the slopes that are open are really well groomed."

Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the next few days were critical. "We had snow in August and a good load in October but it melted away. But if there's no snow for Christmas, then we will have a problem."

Unterfinger concedes that the strength of the Swiss franc, seen by investors as a safe haven during the euro's travails, is also a mounting concern for the hoteliers of Klosters.

"Holidays in Switzerland have become 25 per cent more expensive for people in the EU compared with last year," Unterfinger said.

"This will influence the number of people who come to Switzerland. We hope to give good value for money, but if a currency rises by 25 per cent, people will go to other places. We can't reduce our prices."

Figures out last week revealed that Switzerland's economy grew at the slowest pace in more than two years in the third quarter, as companies cut spending and exports slumped, thanks to the strength of the franc.

Between July and September, gross domestic product increased by just 0.2 per cent compared with the previous quarter, which saw a 0.5 per cent rise, according to the state secretariat for economic affairs. More than 10,000 jobs have been axed by Swiss firms since the northern summer.

Already, the currency increase has had a discernible effect in Klosters.

The resort, which is popular with hikers and mountain bikers between May and September, saw a 15 per cent decline in the number of summer visitors from the EU. Now, in the run-up to Christmas, Klosters is hitting back, offering free lift passes to visitors who stay in its hotels.

It is a sign of the tough times the Swiss tourist industry is feeling.

But it is of little comfort to the town's hoteliers that they are not alone in feeling the pinch. "Austria, France, Italy, Scandinavia - we all face an exceptional weather situation," Unterfinger said.

However, "after the driest November we could soon have an awful lot of snow".

This would bring welcome relief to resorts across the Alps. Amid increasingly pessimistic talk of a double dip, they need their equivalent of the eurozone's "big bazooka".

- OBSERVER