Tour operator Skiworld wipes out in Austria amid post-Brexit dip in UK chalet hosts
Skiworld – the UK’s largest independent ski tour operator – has pulled out of much of its operation in Austria as a result of post-Brexit red tape, City A.M. has learnt.
The London-based firm – which runs chalets across the Alps – told City PM that a dip in the number of UK staff it is able to employ overseas as a result of post-Brexit bureaucracy, has prompted it to stop operating the majority of its chalets in the country.
“Austria is a nightmare. Thirty years of building up a programme of accommodation in Austria has pretty much been completely wiped,” Diane Palumbo, sales and marketing director at Skiworld, said, with the firm now operating only in the popular St Anton resort.
“We’ve still got chalets in St Anton but we have to staff those with EU staff because Austria has a quota on the number of non-EU visas it issues.”
It comes following a report last week from the travel trade association ABTA, which found that the number of UK staff employed overseas between 2017 and 2023 has plummeted, with hiring costs also rising, as firms struggle to wade through a snowstorm of bureaucracy post-Brexit.
The sector is calling for an extension of youth mobility agreements – which allow young workers to work abroad for short periods – to European Union (EU) countries.
The UK currently has agreements with countries including New Zealand, Australia and Japan but none with any EU member state, making it harder for British holiday staff to work overseas.
Skiworld said that before the UK’s departure from the EU, it had 22 chalets in Austria, but this has now reduced to just 6.
Data shared with City PM also shows a more than twofold dip in the number of UK passport holders working in the firms’ European resorts, between the 2016/17 and 2022/23 seasons. In the same period, EU passport holders increased more than seven-fold.
When asked whether the company had anticipated pulling out of Austria entirely, Palumbo said “not yet,” with EU staff now helping to secure the business.
As travel experiences a booming period of post-pandemic demand, she described the firms frustration at not being able to tap in.
“We had a good season last year… and whats frustrating is that we could have made more and we could have taken more people away and we could have employed more people but the uncertainty around being able to get our operations going put a cap on that.”