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Wednesday night NHK news 9 . Long story on the impact of the High yen and the crumbling Aussie dollar, empty booking sheets in hotels that have 80% Aus patronage

condos that were going for a mint, being dumped and unable to sell.

Pretty interesting story.

The massive ( and gawdy) brand new Hilton, in Niseko looks to be at the very minute, a horrible white elephant in the making.....

 

anyway else see it?

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never said it did?? that was another particular hotel, where the manager said 80% of his customers were from Australia.

 

NHK had a 5 min piece, there must be a bit of worry there, or a boring news day.....

 

 

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they were here the other week.....trying to "find" a story about cancellations due to high yen against some other currencies.

They aired it on local news. But it seems booking are actually up this year.

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What has definitely happened is arrogant, greedy and at times stupid chancers have had to acquire or bluff humility pretty bloody quickly.

 

A level of normalcy has descended on the area.

 

Future success will be built on intelligence and respect for the customer and for staff.

 

I for one am happy and hopeful

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As far as I can tell bookings at the Hilton are going pretty well this season.

Overall visitor numbers for this season look to be similar or even a little more than last season. Some management comapanies did take on a lot more properties for the coming season and needed a significant increase in visitor numbers to reach the same occupancy levels as last season. Of course that doesn't look likely now.

Still most companies are now offering significant discounts on new bookings and at least one company I know of are passing on these discounts to all existing bookings as well.

Still plenty of people coming, just not the exponential increase in numbers we have been seeing over the last few years.

There have been plenty of media types around the village recently and frankly it matters little what you say to them as it seems they've already made up their minds on the story they want to tell.

Pretty much all the development and investment in Niseko over the last 4 years has been from foreigners. Japanese investment has been minimal with most claiming they believed everything happening here was just another bubble. At times it seems to me that there is a bit of 'I told you so' vindication from them now that this financial crisis has happened.

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If we look back through the years.

 

Honolulu was the place to go lei's on arrival, swaying palm trees, beautiful smiling locals, white sandy beachs and golden tans - in come the developers more hotels Bigger hotels to accomodate and lure the tourists. They then found that all the buildings they had built on the beach cast shadows over the beach by 2oclock and the beautiful white beachs were now in shade - the Hawaiian experiece became a visit to an over commericalised island. Tourist found somewhere else to go for that experience so they started going to Surfers Paradise.

 

Surfers Paradise - Beautiful Beaches, the smell of coconut oil drifting through the air, bird watchers bar, beer gardens, locals mixing with tourists, mini mokes - In come the developers Sky Scrapers, Trendy cafe's, expensive shops (some only for the asian trade), porsches, mercedes and now all the die hard locals stay away and now it is just like a complete tourist town with no feel about it. So tourist numbers go down and they look for somewhere else to go.

 

I hope this doesn't happen to Niseko. Even when we where there we noticed all the new apartments being built on prime land.

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Niseko still has some of the best snow on the planet. That's why people came in the first place and why they'll keep coming back. There's just a whole lot more accommodation options to choose from now as well as a greater range of restaurants and bars.

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Yes but like the places snowhunter mentions, there is a saturation point. How many skiers will the mountain (not the hotels, etc.) accomodate? 1000, 10000, 100000 skiers/riders? When the runs get too crowded, and the perfect powder gets tracked out too quickly, people will be looking for the next snow destination.

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Originally Posted By: keba
Yes but like the places snowhunter mentions, there is a saturation point. How many skiers will the mountain (not the hotels, etc.) accomodate? 1000, 10000, 100000 skiers/riders? When the runs get too crowded, and the perfect powder gets tracked out too quickly, people will be looking for the next snow destination.


There is a balance; I guess that is the point isn't it? Japanese resorts don't usually have the kind of facilities that foreign visitors expect or need. Niseko provides these and is therefore arguably a better holiday option than any other Japanese ski resort - depending on one's priorities. The snow quality issue is IMHO more marketing than anything else. Really, if there is a difference between Niseko snow and other good places in Hokkaido or Honshu it is marginal, depends on the day and largely irrelevant if it gets tracked out by mid morning. It is a fun resort with better terrain polices than just about any Japanese resort I know of but as you say Keba, there is a point when the popularity of the place starts to detract from its appeal. Unfortunately without sensible development planning and management the pendulum invariably swings too far and by all accounts we will probably see this happen at Niseko, but not for a while I think. I’m sure others would say it has already happened…
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Originally Posted By: Rag-Doll
I’m sure others would say it has already happened…


I'm one of those, and I've only ever skied there once, in Feb '05. There was too much development then for my tastes. But I live on the Gold Coast, like snowhunter, and have seen what that sort of developmnet can do to the ambience of a holiday destination of any kind. Good for the local economy, sure, but for me, that's not really what it's all about. You can lose the character of the place, the reason it became popular in the first place. Of course, if you limit development too much in the face of overwhelming demand, you end up with an enclave for only the super-rich.
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Personally I don't feel there's been that much development at all, certianly not enought to turn this place into a true interntaional standard resort. But then I never came here because of any interest in Japanese culture whatsoever. I came for the snow and it's why I stayed. Sure there's been plenty of new accommodation options developed over the last 5 years but there needs to be a lot more than just that to create a great resort.

 

Rag-doll the snow quality is not just a marketing thing. Sure there are other resorts in Japan that have similar if not better quality but Niseko has never really been competing with other resorts in Japan. We are after the affluent international skiing market, our competitors are US, Canada and Europe. Having skied in many places around the world I can say, at least in my opinion, that the snow here is up there with the best that can be found anywhere on the planet.

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I'm one of those, and I've only ever skied there once, in Feb '05. There was too much development then for my tastes.

 

Keba if the 2005 level of development was too much I have to wonder why you went at all. What did you expect a t-bar and a paddock? It's development, even now, is still not at the level of most Aussie resorts.

 

Rag-doll the snow quality is not just a marketing thing. Sure there are other resorts in Japan that have similar if not better quality but Niseko has never really been competing with other resorts in Japan.

 

But it is though GN. Everytime some goes on about Niseko's powder and that it is world class etc. the implication is that snow of that quality is not found elsewhere in Japan. When it is. In fact it is all over the place and pretty much depends on the day. So the idea that Niseko is a "powder mecca" etc. suggests that there is something unique about the place when so far as snow and Japan is conerned, it isn't.

 

I haven't your level of experience but I do agree that it is great no doubt about that, but a good day at Kiroro or Rusutsu or Arai (when it was open) or Shiga or even good 'old Kagura or any of a dozen other places can produce just as good conditions. I'm not knocking Niseko at all. I guess I'm saying that its success is as much to do with good marketing as anything else rather than its snow being so good. Back when Qantas was involved and Hanazono was going to be the next big thing, the only Japanese ski info you could get in Aust was about Niseko - hardly a word was ever mentioned about Hakuba and other places. I remember one person being surprised it was even possible to ski on Honshu.

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Sorry Rag-Doll but I don't really understand your argument. Should those involved in investment in Niseko have marketed the snow conditions something along the lines of 'Niseko gets pretty average snow conditions when compared to other resorts in Japan'. Or as you do when marketing a product do you possibly colour it up a bit and go with something more like 'Niseko, powder capital of the world!'.

 

As I said before businesses in Niseko have never really considered other Japanese ski resorts as potential competitors. And their marketing never had anything to do with trying to say Niseko gets better snow than other Japanese ski resorts. It's been about marketing to the international skiing market that Niseko gets better snow than North America and Europe. The reason other ski areas didn't get the marketing that Niseko got was because there wasn't major foreign investment at those resorts and lets face it the Japanese themselves haven't got a bloody clue of how to market to the international market.

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Side-bar: is the snow at Kagura generally really on par with Niseko? I would be disappointed if so (if I went to Niseko). While Kagura can be fantastic, I would like to think there is better. And, it can easily be not good at all.

 

(Sorry!)

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Originally Posted By: Rag-Doll
Keba if the 2005 level of development was too much I have to wonder why you went at all.


Perhaps I exagerrated. What I didn't like was the way it is being bought up by Aussie developers, marketing to Aussie investors. That will inevitably ruin any of the intrinsic "Japaneseness" of the resort. I realise withourt foreign investment nothing would be happening at all, like in Hakuba (flame-proof suit on wink ), but unlike GoNative, a big part of the reason I travel to Japan is to try and experience some of the local culture, not just the snow.
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Originally Posted By: Go Native
Sorry Rag-Doll but I don't really understand your argument. Should those involved in investment in Niseko have marketed the snow conditions something along the lines of 'Niseko gets pretty average snow conditions when compared to other resorts in Japan'. Or as you do when marketing a product do you possibly colour it up a bit and go with something more like 'Niseko, powder capital of the world!'.



How about "truth in advertising!" wink GN, I've no real issue at all, honestly. Niseko is a great product for a lot of reasons and absolutely the snow is one of them. The unfortunate consequence is a certain myopia amongst the international visitors. more of an observation rather than anything else.


And Muika, yeah, to be fair Kags' snow can be good but isn't quite in the same league as Hokkaido snow.
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It seems to be that a lot of complaints about there being too many Aussies and the overall increase in popularity of Niseko come from two distinct groups of people.

 

Type 1 - Those who don't live in Japan and seem to think that skiing in Japan must also include some sort of cultural experience. Many of these people will have booked themselves a package deal offered by a tour company making its money from economies of scale. They then get to Niseko and bemoan the loads of (other) Aussies doing exactly the same thing. Many of these same people won't be familiar with the typical Japanese ski resort that has zero night life and so when they go out at night looking for something to do all they see are other Aussies doing the same thing. This creates a distorted impression of the general number of Aussies in the place. The locals still out number Aussies by a large margin, they're just not visible at night because they're all sitting in their rooms. These people are often want it both ways ? cheap and easy trips with local infrastructure to accommodate non-Japanese speaking visitors to places that retain their cultural uniqueness. If you want to be a trail blazer, go some place else no one else is going, don't go to Niseko because everyone is talking about it and then bitch because it is over run by multitudes of unimaginative tourists.

 

 

Type 2 - Long term residents in Japan who for a variety of reasons (few of them particularly flattering) like being the only foreigner in the village. There is a strong parallel with that Little Britain sketch about being the only gay in the village. These people resent the influx of foreigners because it means they are no longer as exotic or as unique as they once were. This group of people (comprised almost exclusively of men) would rather remain the only foreigner in the village and bitch about slow lifts, crap safety patrol policies and dreadful food rather than share Japanese ski resorts with visiting foreigners who might enable the resorts to actually make a profit or improve the facilities/policies and, dare I say it, force them to face some uncomfortable facts about themselves.

 

 

This was one of my first posts on SJ - people have been talking about Niseko development for years! The Type 2 person doesn't seem to be all that common on SJ anymore (and it was a tad harsh even when I made the comment), but it seems there are still quite a few Type 1 people around.

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Originally Posted By: keba
I realise withourt foreign investment nothing would be happening at all, like in Hakuba (flame-proof suit on wink )


From what I hear, some of the new types in Hakuba are too busy pushing for position and/or hating each other to be able to a bigger picture. Perhaps Niseko was like that a number of years ago..
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