Q&A
Crude Awakenings
Geoff Straight, Last Frontier Heliskiing in B.C.
Last Updated: Monday, June 30, 2008 | 2:43 PM ET
By Eve Savory CBC News
Skiing powder on some inaccessible mountain slope may be every skier's dream, but Geoff Straight, sales and reservations manager at Last Frontier Heliskiing, says that in recent years, he's noticed a drop-off in the company's mid-range customers. Last Frontier sells off-trail downhill skiing tours and takes as many as 120 people a week into British Columbia's coastal mountains. The largest of the helicopters it leases to do that burns 400 litres of fuel an hour.
Skiers with TLH Heliskiing in the South Chilcotin Mountains, 200 kilometres north of Vancouver. CBCNews.ca: What has the price of fuel done to your business?
Geoff Straight: It has given us a lot of higher direct operating costs. Helicopter expenses, helicopter time and fuel [are] the largest expense[s] in the business of helicopter skiing ... so if you look at a roughly 30 per cent increase over the last year, that's what we're paying for helicopter fuel.
Some operators have chosen, and transportation companies in particular have chosen, to do fuel surcharges. We have not. We publish our prices about 18 months in advance and people are signing up for our trips 18 months in advance, so I guess it's just a question of fairness.
What do you charge for a week of heliskiing?
Between about $8,000 and $11,000.
I would have thought if someone could afford to pay that, it wouldn't make a difference if you added $25 a day surcharge.
One of the things we like to avoid is the nickel-and-diming … Our trips are at the very, very high end of the helicopter skiing industry.
For 2010, our prices are going to rise dramatically, though.
Tourism operators in general, certainly the guys that are offering destination-type trips, they kind of have to suck it up for the year the jump [in fuel costs] actually happens, and then pricing is affected two years out.
Geoff Straight, sales and reservations manager, Last Frontier Heliskiing. What sort of price increase are you thinking of?
For 2010, we're probably looking in the six per cent to eight per cent range.
Do you expect to see a drop in tourism as a result of what is happening worldwide?
I think we've already seen the drop, from the U.S. market, and it's only going to get worse.
What would it mean to you if the price of fuel doubled again?
The profitability in a lot of the tourism industries [is] going to be severely reduced. So you are going to require a certain volume to operate.
We are probably one of those ones that have a decent volume, but it's going to mean the elimination of probably a lot of the smaller operators.
You are so high-end, I assume you're getting the wealthy, luxury traveler?
You'd be surprised. When I first started this 11 years ago, I thought that, too, but there are a lot of people, the higher middle class in the U.S., [who] could afford this four years ago, [but] they can't now. It makes a huge difference.
'The shorter trips, the more moderately priced ones, don't sell as well as they used to because there are just less people in the market, and they've got to buy groceries instead of going out skiing.'—Geoff Straight
So you become more and more elitist, which you probably don't like?
Which we don't like. Exactly. Like, our super high-end packages sell the best. And the shorter trips, the more moderately priced ones, don't sell as well as they used to because there are just less people in the market, and they've got to buy groceries instead of going out skiing.
And they're losing their houses, some of them.
Exactly.
