Job losses mount at Saanenland mountain restaurants

UPDATE February 8: all the main mountain restaurants, including Eggli, Wispile, Wasserngrat, Rellerli, Horneggli, Saanerslochgrat, La Videmanette, Rinderberg Spitz, and Restaurant Gobeli, are once again open. Not all the mountains are skiable, but at least you go up and enjoy a meal.

As we limp into February with just three snowfalls and less than 50cm of cumulative snow all season, an economic fiasco is taking hold at some Gstaad-area mountain restaurants. While we can always try to find the positive side of this season's dire conditions (and Gstaad Tourismus are the specialists at that!), reality is starting to bite for some area Berghaus operators. At one end of the scale, Nik and Simon Buchs, operators of the Wasserngrat mountain restaurant, and the Botta restaurant at Glacier 3000 are reporting decent business, aided by the significant numbers of non-skiing visitors on those particular hills. At the other end of the scale is the "sun-hill" Rellerli. Early February would normally see lenghy lines at the Rellerli base station as one of Gstaad-area skiers' favorite hills to bask in endless days of glorious sunshine. Yet this season, the 5th mildest on record since 1864, that endless sunshine is a curse, melting away any meager snowfall we've had within 48 hours. As of right now, the hill is as green as in August and the excellent, newly-renovated mountain restaurant atop it is hurting, and badly.

Above: the new fondue stuebli at Saanersloch awaits visitors.

Last week GstaadLife sister publication, the Anzeiger von Saanen, reported that proprietor Christian Oberson was forced to lay off 17 workers, and although he was able to find new jobs for all of them elsewhere in the region, it's never been this bad. The restaurant is now closed, and Oberson hopes to limp through the remainder of the season with a skeletal staff. With the benefit of hindsight, one might note that the Rellerli was always the last hill to open and the first to close, and hence it's old "staff-light" self-service concept was perhaps the only economically viable one. But no-one could have predicted a winter like this one. Over at the new fondue stuebli at the Saanersloch (pictured above), there's a similar story with eight lay-offs. Even the crew at the Ticino grotto at the top of Horneggli has been affected, with staffers currently enjoying extra holidays...at home in Ticino. Restaurants that rely on connecting thru-traffic from skiers are in dire straits, with numbers down as much as 80% at locations on the Rinderberg Ronda and the "military-chic" Videmanette. When Bergbahnen Gstaad came up with their new marketing concepts for each mountain restaurant at the beginning of the season, they certainly could not have foretold that "closed" or "struggling" would be the main themes of 2006/7. We can certainly thank any and all who decided that snow-making infrastructure was important for Gstaad's future, but let's just hope for a dash of the real white stuff soon before the economic situation descends into a complete fiasco. The GstaadLife print edition will have more details and all the latest on this developing story in next week's edition.