WHAT TO EXPECT
Payment: Cashless transactions grow. Pay for tickets, lessons and rentals online and load your lunch money on your pass all before arriving.
Food: Social distancing means reduced capacity in restaurants and cafeterias. Eat early or late to avoid lines or chow on the fly at new outdoor eateries and graband-go options.
Lodges/chalets: With reduced seating and numbers limited to previously crowded public areas, resorts encourage skiers to arrive fully suited up, including
booting up in the parking lot. Indoors, one-direction arrows (attempt to) direct flow and staff monitor for congestion.
Lift lines: Mazes extend significantly to accommodate two-metre social distancing, RFID and other staff-less pass-checking expand, and Canadian skiers’ inherent politeness will reign at alternating intersections.
Lift riding: The singles line goes on hold this season. Family pods ride together but strangers can’t join. The jury is still out on whether single riders may pair up on quads and six-packs. Liftees load every other gondola at some resorts, as cabins
are cleaned after every trip. Bigger gondolas and trams run at significantly reduced capacity. Expect longer lineups and reserved boarding times (like at theme parks), especially on busy weekends.
Après: Dance in your boots and your Buff neckwear. The same rules apply on-hill at restaurants, bars and nightspots—even toilet facilities. Expect fewer seats, dispersed crowds and indoor mask-wearing.
Quotas and deals: To maintain social distancing and manage lift lines some resorts may limit ticket sales and encourage mid-week skiing with price incentives. Hills with fewer destination-skiers may reduce the number of days they operate.
Fewer accents: Apart from few foreign travellers, where will our employees come from? This will be most noticed in Western Canada. The ski industry hopes young Canadians turned off by online university will fill the gap created by closed borders—though with increasing enrolment that looks doubtful. And where will they sleep? Crowded staff housing and 10 to an apartment probably won’t fly.