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Hello everyone

 

Thanks for all of your posts - I'm looking forward to reading them at a more leisurely pace (joke intended)!

 

Presently the English Web is being taken down, & ads and the like pulled.

 

Work finished for everyone yesterday. From today a skeleton staff is shutting things down.

 

I have until 17 July to wrap things up, so am presently contacting guests and the like with reservations as well as seasonal part-time workers.

 

Although I will do my best to get in touch with everyone that has reservations etc, if you know of anybody that has plans to visit the resort kindly pass along the word.

 

Thank you and regards

 

Blair.

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What a shame. Arai and the way it did business had so much to offer the Japanese snow industry. If it isn’t bought up and kept going it will be a real loss for everyone. I always thought the location of the resort was a strange choice because there was not a lot on offer for beginners or lower intermediates and it was prone to some nasty weather, though on a good day, Arai was as good as any resort I’ve been to in Japan. The facilities were fantastic. After a hard day of riding steep powder or struggling in white out conditions (more often the latter!) getting massage and relaxing in the spa before getting stuck into some good Italian food made it one of my favorite places. My wife isn’t a keen skier so Arai offered something for both of us - she could get a facial while I was doing face plants – the best of both worlds!

 

Blair - Good luck with everything. Before anyone else suggests it, tell any prospective buyer that they should dismantle Arai and take it to Higashiyama in Niseko. If someone can combine the Arai experience with a more user friendly mountain they'ed be on a winner.

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Fatts, you gotta find out what a "typo" means, especially since that's one of your trademarks. But I totally agree with you that a place needs local support as well.

 

However, there is an obvious difference between Arai and Club Med which makes the latter a goldmine compared to Arai. Just saying that the place is English friendly is not going to draw in a lot of extra business.

 

I actually preferred Arai to Club Med by far for the quality of their service. But the type of service offered at Club Med is not offered at Arai and it is my guess that if it were, it would probably draw in the crowds.

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Glad to know you are alright, Blair.

Do take care of yourself as well as customers.

 

When we don't have enough snow, we lose a lot business, when we have tons of snow we do the same. Pity it all depends on the snow in this ski industry.

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That is a shocker! Never thought it would happen. Hope you'll be ok Blair, wishing you the best. Do not despair, many resorts have gone bankrupt and been bought back and put back into operations. Given the quality of the facilities at Arai, I am sure the same will happen.

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There's always going to be tightasses and they won't be interested in you. There's also a market that wants the frills. Whether they can get them to the resort or not is of course a different matter.

 

Sorry to hear that Blair, good luck.

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Rach,

Not sure if there is some unique Japanese way this sort of thing is usually done but you often see the creditors get together and appoint either administrators or liquidators to take control of the business and its assets. Generally this would be done either by court appointment or pursuant to some security agreement the company has with its financier. Administrators are often used when there is the possibility of turning the business around and running it as a going concern, at least until a buyer can be found. Businesses go broke for a number of reasons and it need not be because the business itself isn't viable, poor management or lack of access to operating capital can also be a cause. Not that I'm saying Arai was poorly managed (I wouldn't know), but you get the idea. Liquidators, as the term implies, are appointed when the creditors simply want to recover as much value from the remaining assets as they can. Depending on Arai's situation, it's not inconceivable that the resort can be sold to a new operator who, for example can take it over without having to take on the development costs, can make a go of it. Several of the island holiday resorts in Aust were built by developers (Skase et al) who subsequently went broke. In some instances, as the infrastructure was still in place and once it was acquired as a reasonable price by a responsible operator, the resorts became viable businesses again. I wouldn't be surprised (and I certainly hope this is the case) that Arai will be bought by some one who opens it up again.

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im guessing that is what will happen.

 

unlike alot of other businesses, u cant (actually, maybe u can?) just take the main assets and move/sell/use em elsewhere. The lifts, hotels etc would be close to worthless i imagine unless they are all operating in some way.

 

maybe theyll just have to cut down on the skipatrol?!

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I agree, there's not a lot of potential for relocating. I wonder, do people ever relocate lift/gondola systems? Apart from the footings of the pylons, most of the bits could be dismantled and set up somewhere else.

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No they never relocate anything. Not even the staff. The liquidators make them dig shallow graves on the premises and then...

 

Well it's too horrible to talk about really.

 

I wonder how much energy costs had a role in the bankruptcy. Arai probably uses a lot for providing all those luxurious services.

 

Blair, I hope you find something else that you enjoy as much. And if you are able to do one last article about why things turned out as they did, I'm sure it will be interesting.

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  • SnowJapan Admin
 Quote:
What will happen to the Arai Now page and those articles from now on?
Both the Arai Now page and the articles were never part of any business arrangement and so they should be staying up. It's too early to say what will happen to the Arai Now page - we only found out about all of this on Monday - and we were in the middle of preparing a new article which will probably now need a rewrite! We'll let you know later. I'm sure Blair will be on here sometime with more thoughts from his point of view.
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That's too bad. I wonder how many more of these will surprise us in coming months?

 

10 mill might not be much but it might be the potential running costs of that super-duper place that might put people off.

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 Quote:
Originally posted by Ocean11:

I wonder how much energy costs had a role in the bankruptcy. Arai probably uses a lot for providing all those luxurious services.

Aside from the hotels, they had a large square that was heated to clear the snow and a big spa building. Depending on how abundant their onsen was, they might have cost a lot to run. Just because you've got an "onsen", it doesn't mean an endless supply of water thats hot enough for business.

110 staff, inc. part-timers according to the article.

How is Club Med different to somewhere like Arai? Is it because they'll take peoples' kids off their hands all day?
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Our good friend Markie's been to a lot of resorts and he suggested it was run differently. Maybe it's the difference between "English-speaking" and "English-friendly". English done professionally and English done (sorry to say this) unprofessionally.

 

From the pdf nightmare that is the Club Med Japan website, the only things I could see were kids clubs with different age brackets. Tbh, I can imagine kyoiku mama types and miihaa Japanese nouveaus wanting to throw their kids in with a lot of unwitting foreign kids too. For the eigo.

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