Our industry celebrates diversity – but demands consistent quality.

EUROPE
Emergency landing as career
launchpad
No end of star-spangled hotels, 110 kilometres of pistes leading into the centre of the resort, a stunning
mountainscape and the magical atmosphere of traditional mountain lodges are the enticements Obergurgl-Hochgurgl
offers to winter sports lovers and event participants.
Until 1931, when Swiss
physicist Professor Auguste
Piccard and his assistant
Paul Kipfer had to make an
emergency landing on the
Gurgler Ferner glacier following
a bold – and at that time
sensational – stratospheric
balloon trip that catapulted
Gurgl, the highest parish in
Europe, onto the pages of the
international press, the inhabitants
of the poor hamlet high
in the mountains had led a
humble life of toil.
But for Gurgl the forced
touchdown came as a blessing
in disguise, because from
then on the free PR attracted a
steadily increasing stream of
tourists, and on the back of
fresh sources of income and
the appropriate expansion the
few mountain farms developed
into the two villages
Obergurgl (1,930 metres
above sea level) and Untergurgl
(1,793 metres above sea
level), which were joined
somewhat later by Hochgurgl
(2,150 metres above sea level).
In the early 1970s professional
hotel development
then got underway, acting as
a further spur to tourism. Today
Obergurgl-Hochgurgl can
boast 4,230 guest beds and
provides accommodation for
around 120,000 guests a year,
according to Hubert Köhler,
the local Ötztal Tourismus of-
fice manager. That is no mean
feat given that there are hardly
450 residents in total. The
bulk of visitors come from
Germany, the UK, Austria and
the Benelux countries, with a
clear preference for winter
tourism. In the summer,
450 residents with
4,230 guest beds
when mountain and Alpine
hikers make up the majority of
guests, half of the roughly 90
lodging businesses close owing
to a lack of demand.
The main season does not
Obergurgl-Hochgurgl
start until – or already begins
in – November, depending
which way you look at it.
While other skiing regions
along the Alpine arc are still
deep in preparation for the
winter season, impatient
piste fans are already curving
or carving in the new snow
that Obergurgl-Hochgurgl can
boast by virtue of its altitude
between 1,850 and 3,000
metres. The locals are rightly
proud of being able to herald
in the ski season in their region.
With a little help from technology:
For 10 years most of
the 110 kilometres of ski runs
Delights of the snow with
an incomparable vista
have been equipped with
computerised artificial snowmaking
facilities, which has
given the two villages high in
the Alps the label “Alpine winter
sports resort with the
most reliable snow conditions
in the Alps”, together with a
host of other quality seals.
The pistes are serviced by 24
mountain lifts in Obergurgl-
Hochgurgl with an hourly capacity
of almost 40,000, carrying
skiers practically from
their hotel doorstep high into
the mountains. A direct connection
is available in the village
centre of Obergurgl,
where the modern Rosskar-
66 1/2010