A major and heart felt thank you from Yana, Chantal, my self and all the Crown FM team for all the support, encouragement and loyalty extended to us during this period and we can promise you all, our every endeavour to create, much brighter days from here on in and in to the future.
This seasons weather was almost the perfect wave, with plenty of great snow nearly all season and wonderful ski conditions up top on the slops, whilst down in the town we only had one week of sub -10 Deg conditions and only lost the operation of one apartment for a week during the whole season, whilst the loss of use of any apartments is not great, given where we are on our road to recovery with the complex, we where very happy with our winter watch management procedures and hope to have no apartments un--operational for next year with the implementation of the next phase of planned remedial activities.
Occupation levels at the Complex have been fantastic, even given the unwarranted disruptive issues that where ever present and it has kept Yana, me and the whole team fully occupied to say the least and i feel everyone enjoyed both the complex and all the new and old favourites Bansko has to offer, and as a resort i really feel its taken huge steeps forward at every level. Yes there are problems but its still a young resort and given the world economic climate, its done remarkably well, even managing to attract new and not insignificant investment.
Yes the Gondola queues particular during the Christmas and New Year period where bad some times horrendous, and during these periods we provided guest alternative transportation up the mountain which worked very well. The rest of the season however things where manageable. What must be remembered is unlike most other western European resorts, once you are up top getting around is marvellous.
Everyone knows we need another Gondola and additional slops to unlock the full potential of the resort, and no one more than Ulen who have pushed at every political and ecological level to achieve this and finally on 19 February 2013 it was approved at Government and European level, being announced across the media as such, unfortunately as all to often happens politics has got in the way, and the CEZ (electrical company) scandal that has brought the government down has meant this along with everything else in the country has been put on ice until the new elections May 12th 2013 are concluded.
The latest we have is that who ever makes up that government will have to pass the approval again, however knowing Ceko Minev (owner of Ulen, Kempinski and a hell of a lot more) i suspect he is canvassing every political persuasion in order to make it happen, i personally believe bye season 2014/15 latest 2016 a new Gondola and slops will be here.
And so to the Summer we are very excited here, i personally love the summer and believe its the real undiscovered future for the resort as a whole and with the complex back under rightful and proper management, we are set and ready to get under way and full range of idea's and opportunities for all owners, friends and guests.
On our next post which will be very soon all the information for these and so much more will be detailed along with lots of other exciting stuff thats going on.
Hope to see you soon.
