AS I write this we are heading into the third week of the winter season 2022.

It's been a whirlwind that is likely to continue!

What a start it has been and a wonderful collaborative effort between the lift company, our businesses and the resort management board to get us open early!

Collaboration is one of the positives to emerge out of the 2019–2020 fires and of course COVID.

Businesses have turned to each other for support, whether that be borrowing stock, staff or just creating an offer jointly for our customer base.

With the trends of staff shortages and staff accommodation it has been a lifeline for some of our businesses here.

None of us are immune to staffing issues we face on the mountain – my on–mountain businesses got hit this week with COVID and flu infections which did cause us to close temporarily.

When another fellow business heard about it, I got a phone call and we had a bit of a chat to see if we could come up with a solution.

So, to cut a long story short, the subject of school holidays and students came up.

School holidays are our busiest times and kids have some time off, what if we put a social media post up and see if we can gauge interest?

Well the rest is history – the post went semi viral, the phone rang the emails came in!

However we still have this issue "where are we going to house them", which is again pretty much a universal problem in tourist areas.

I think we are onto something that can assist our community by giving students a taste of the alpine industry whilst assisting us in the busiest time of the season.

We will do a small pilot this season with a handful that we could find accommodation for and see how it goes.

The think tank will be expanded to the resort management board with some plans to keep talking to see if we can put a formal package together for next season based on our mini pilot.

A special mention to Alpine Spirit Coaches, Jack Frost Restaurant and the media for picking up the story and assisting the spread of information.