For many smaller ski resorts below around 1,500 meters, winter is becoming a risk. Rain falls more often than snow. Snowmaking costs more and offers less planning security. At the same time, large destinations attract guests, capital, and attention. In this situation, summer seems like a way out. The lift should continue to run, this time with mountain bikers. A new park should bring in money. Dug-out lines should replace what is missing on the slopes. This can work. But only where the terrain, demand, capital, and concept fit together. Too often, a summer product is based on a model that has long since ceased to be profitable in winter.

A case that shows everything

Königsberg-Hollenstein in Lower Austria illustrates this logic in all its harshness. At the end of 2025, the operating company filed for bankruptcy. Last season, operating costs of more than €650,000 were offset by a net loss of €452,500. The approximately 767,000 euros in debt was offset by remaining assets of only around 120,000 euros. Winter operations ran for exactly three days. 

The site not only had five T-bar lifts, a children's rope lift, and around 14 kilometers of slopes, but also a summer bike park. The bike park was not the cause of the collapse. But it was not the savior either. That is precisely the point. When the winter season is almost canceled, a summer product cannot simply fill the gap. Especially not when it requires infrastructure, maintenance, staff, and ongoing upkeep. Four markets, one pressure Königsberg is not an outlier. The case represents a greater pressure that is spreading across the Alpine region. At the border triangle in Carinthia, the business collapsed under 3.2 million euros in debt. In Jungholz, the ski lifts slid into insolvency in 2024. Even at Sudelfeld in Bavaria, it was not possible to continue without repeated state aid amounting to millions. And in northern Italy, several areas had to close early due to an acute lack of snow, including Predaia, Terminillo, and Merano 2000.

These cases do not all prove the same thing. And they do not prove that every bike park leads an area into bankruptcy. They show something more important: small and medium-sized ski resorts are under such severe structural pressure today that every new summer investment immediately becomes a gamble. Anyone planning a bike park in this situation is not building in a free market. They are building in a market that is already under pressure from climate, costs, and competition. The mistake is in the calculation. A built bike park is not a signpost in the forest. It is a business. Dug lines, berms, jumps, drainage, wooden features, signage, safety, rescue, repairs: all of this costs money every year. What looks like progress on paper translates into machine hours, liability, and maintenance in practice. For a large destination, this is part of the system. For a small lift company, it can become the next millstone around its neck. This is exactly where the calculations for many projects go wrong. The park is supposed to bring in new guests. In fact, it first brings new obligations.
Proponents of such projects still have a point. Bike parks can attract guests. They can bring in a younger audience. They can boost rental, catering, and hotel businesses. But that's not enough on its own. If the winter season is too weak, the lift too old, and the balance sheet already too thin, the summer season will not lead to recovery. It will prolong the problem with new costs. The better answer is smaller. The answer cannot be to write off mountain biking. On the contrary. Many regions should take it more seriously than they have done so far. But not as a cheap copy of the big bike parks. For many small valleys, the opportunity lies more in good tours, well-maintained existing trails, clear signage, legal access, and a bike season that is as long as possible and independent of lifts than in a half-baked bike park on credit. This is less spectacular on the brochure. But it is often closer to what many mountain bikers are actually looking for: good trails, honest tours, scenery, peace and quiet, and a place to stop for refreshments that is not dependent on a loss-making lift model.

Mountain biking is an opportunity. But it is not a resuscitation program for a winter system that is already collapsing economically. Those who confuse the two are not building a future. They are adding new costs to an old problem.