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France Ski Deals - Ski Holidays in France
- First Tour Operators
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You can count the first ski holiday entrepreneurs on just three
fingers - Arnold Lunn, Erna Low and Walter Ingham.
Lunn was the first to take a party of university students out to
Murren in Switzerland just after the Great War and he was,
incidentally, the first man to organise ski slalom racers in 1925. It wasn't until 1932 that Erna Löwwe, an Austrian studying
in London, decided that the only way to get to see her family in Vienna
was to organise a ski trip and skim a little off the top to contribute
to her own ski hoiliday. Remarkably she took only five other punters,
paying just £15 for a fortnight in Solden.
Two years later Walter Ingham, a twenty year old Englishman, brought up
in Vienna, could be found working as a sales rep for Remington
typewriters in London. It was not a job he liked, especially when the
winter came as he'd spent his boyhood skiing. As we all know when the
first snowflake falls skiing is just about all we can think about too.
He followed Erna Low's example - she had now changed her name - and took fifteen punters to the Tyrol and paid
for the whole of his holiday. He had £25 in the bank at the beginning
of this season and by the end, after taking another five groups, this
had risen to £80 and he was in business. He started to organise
walking, seaside, and ski holidays in France and continued to build the
company until he retired to Elba (not much skiing there) in 1962.
At one stage he was sharing hired trains from London to the Alps with Erna Low
as they had become friendly rivals, so even back in the fifties the
punters were able to rock their way through France dancing to live music and by
the 1950s he was chartering aircraft to speed up the travelling.
Today Inghams is a skiing holiday market leader and transports over
14000 people to the Alps. They are the longest surviving ski company
that has not been taken over, and continue to offer an exceptional
service on France ski deals.
So when you next go on a ski holiday spare a thought for those three
entrepreneurs who started the whole thing off less than a hundred years
ago.
©Simon Dewhurst - 15 December 2010
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