Cardrona Alpine Resort offers 345 hectares of skiing and snowboarding in New Zealand's Southern Lakes area.
Customers at a popular South Island ski field are fuming after paying full price for what they claim was an overcrowded, half-baked ski experience during the school holidays.
Cardrona Alpine Resort charged adults $160 a day but only opened two slopes last Thursday, one disgruntled customer told the Herald.
That meant customers were waiting 45 minutes in queues every time they wanted to access a ski lift.
Cardrona admitted to the Herald that last week’s experience was not what the resort wanted to deliver and that it closed off bookings for the remainder of the holidays to keep numbers under control.
“You don’t mind paying extra if they controlled the numbers, but they didn’t,” said Amanda Young, whose family went to Cardrona last week.
Her family have skied at Cardrona and nearby Treble Cone for decades and travelled down from Nelson last week to hit the slopes for a school holiday escape.
Cardrona Ski Fields charged its customers $160 a day per adult but only provided two open slopes for the “overcrowded” skiers.
The family purchased a two-day pass to use within a three-day window. Both slopes were closed on Tuesday and Wednesday due to adverse weather.
The mountain opened on Thursday - and the family knew it would be busy so arrived extra early.
What Young found were overcrowded ski slopes that meant they would struggle to ski anywhere without running into somebody. Ten minutes of skiing was followed by the best part of an hour waiting to reach the top again.
“We had a day’s worth of skiing but it was absolutely packed,” she said.
“We were concerned we paid top dollar for restricted skiing but [thought] we wouldn’t have 45-minute queues. So we had that, plus a limited area you could actually ski, it just wasn’t value for money.”
Other unhappy customers took to social media, one attendee saying the crowded guests made the experience “flat-out dangerous”.
“I appreciate that passes are trying to be limited, but today was certainly not limited enough,” he wrote.
Another person said he witnessed a number of injuries being dealt with by ski patrol, with too many people allowed on the only two runs available.
“Today was quite frankly unsafe ... I get the idea but you didn’t get it right today.”
Cardrona Alpine Resort responded to customers on Facebook, saying they were “the first to admit” they didn’t get the numbers right.
“We had more guests than we were aiming for. We’re learning and adapting to the new changes ourselves,” they said in their reply.
Those skiing over the weekend had to wait in 45-minute queues every time they wanted to access a ski lift.
Young said many of the people she met on Thursday were international tourists.
“It’s outrageous what they charge, we supported them through Covid and bad years, but they’re clearly going for the Australian market now,” she said.
“Suddenly we feel they don’t care about us anymore and New Zealand skiers. The [resort] is known for their friendliness of staff but the decision-making capacities aren’t there anymore.”
Cardrona’s general manager, Laura Hedley, acknowledged the school holidays are “without doubt” the busiest time of year for the resort, and that they’d received feedback about the number of guests in recent seasons.
“In direct response to that, our team developed a new booking system whereby guests are encouraged to book in advance for the days they want to join us,” she said.
Longtime customers told the Herald Cardrona has typically appeared to put its best foot forward.
“This now means we can cap our guest numbers each day.”
Hedley said like all new processes, the team were continuing to learn and adapt, and that her team was “the first to say when we don’t get it right”.
“Last week threw a spanner, and it wasn’t a simple solve,” she said.
According to Hedley, last week’s issues made this the first season in a long time in which snowfall hadn’t arrived in time for the number of visitors. This was despite the forecast initially indicating the field would meet capacity.
“But the forecast passed over with all but a dusting of fresh snow.”
Strong westerlies forced Cardrona to close both days last week due to safety. The team moved quickly to reduce the capacity number but, Hedley confirmed, more visitors had arrived than the resort was aiming for.
“We acknowledge that this wasn’t the experience we were striving to deliver,” said Hedley, before adding the upshot was that by the end of the week they’d successfully reduced the capacity even further than its normal range, so feedback improved from Friday onwards.
Going forward, Cardrona has promised to keep its guests well-informed through social media with up-to-date snow reports, and management had also closed off bookings for the remainder of the school holidays.
