Winter is drawing closer and many ski resorts, like Big White near Kelowna, are gearing up for another season.
However, Michael J. Ballingall, senior vice president at Big White, said there are serious concerns when it comes to staff accommodations.
“I think we’re like every other resort in the world and accommodation-seekers in any resort town, its catastrophic,” said Ballingall.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it and I have been here since 1985.”
He said the housing crunch is due to former rental properties being sold at a tremendous pace during the last two years.
“We’ve probably turned over about 40 per cent of the on-mountain accommodation,” said Ballingall, adding that many places previously rented to mountain staff members have been sold.
Ballingall said the resort has created 450 staff beds during the last three years.
Big White would normally employ more than 1,100 people, but, with limited space, Ballingall says the resort isn’t able to do so this year.
“We have very few staff who commute from town. And with the price of fuel these days, it’s even less attractive to commute from town,” he said.
“So we’re looking at things like shuttle busses from town, but they still have to find beds in town. And — as we know from meeting and talking with the University of British Columbia Okanagan, they had a terrible time finding beds for all their students — there is no easy answer here.”
Ballingall said this isn’t new to Big White, as similar incidents also happened in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
“We’re going to try and get through another year and just see how the economy does. This has happened before at Big White but not in this type of cycle,” said Ballingall.
“We’re just going to do our best to make sure that we can have on-mountain staff in beds as good as possible.”
Big White’s opening day is planned for Nov. 24.
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