Mountain bikers are a blessing for the struggling Alpine tourism industry. If the winter sports enthusiasts stay away, they fill the financial gap and the empty beds. That's what many people think and hope. However, it would be a dairy calculation to disprove this. On good days in winter, there are sometimes over 10,000 people on the mountain in larger ski resorts. Imagine if a region like Zermatt had 10,000 mountain bikers on a single day. A collapse would be inevitable. Against this background alone, it is absurd to equate mountain bikers with winter tourism. The mountain railroads are also a limiting factor. A mountain biker needs about five times as much space as a skier because of his vehicle. Mountain railroads would therefore have to multiply their transport capacities in summer in order to keep up with the dimensions in winter. You don't need to be a tourism expert to see that this is an illusion.

In recent decades, mountain tourism has developed into a mass business with enormous infrastructure costs. Mass instead of class, the main thing is to keep the cash register ringing. Now this system is beginning to falter and instead of learning from its mistakes, it is being transferred to mountain bike tourism. A symbol of this are the flow trails and pump tracks that are springing up everywhere in the same design. Interchangeable fun instead of unique experiences. Mountain bike tourism is well on the way to repeating the mistakes of winter without reflection.

Mountain bikers would do well not to see themselves as the savior of the struggling Alpine tourism industry. They are not a means of keeping the oversized infrastructure from the winter alive. But they are an opportunity for more sustainable tourism. For class instead of mass. Mountain bikers should not measure themselves against winter sports. Because these cubits will soon no longer be a yardstick.
 

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