[Nick]

I sent a message to RAL asking about the likely pricing if they buy Turoa.

Here is their response:

Thanks for your response. Pricing for next year will be:
1) If we dont buy Turoa, Season Passes will be at $199 per adult, same as
this year.
2) If we do buy Turoa Season Passes will be at between $239 and $249 per
adult. This pass will allow you to ski both ski areas.
3) Adult All Lift Day passes will stay the same price but the lift pass
will allow you to ski or board at both Whakapapa and Turoa. You get 1100
hectares of ski area for the same price (Whakapapa and Turoa are 550
hectares each in size and you would pay $108 at present to ski both.) The
guided traverse on skis or boards will allow you to pass from one ski area
to the other freely during the day – at no extra cost. You can park your
car at Whakapapa, ski or board Whakapapa and Turoa in that day and then back
to your car at the end of the day. In the South Island you will pay around
$60/day to ski only 20%, or less in some cases, of the terrain that we are
offering for $54.

Hope you think this pricing is acceptable.

The above initiatives gives some indication of the thinking of the
management at Whakapapa. This thinking has created the culture of Ruapehu
Alpine Lifts Ltd that has been in place since 1953 and before.

Regards
Debbie Thomson
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

[Toby Regan]

This is the proposed submission that we have written on behalf of the club, keen to have any feedback from other memebers.

We have read the Commerce Commissions document on the Whkapapa ? Turoa buy out, some seventy odd pages of wordy debate, and would like to submit the Wellington Tramping and Mountain Club (being an interested party) do not support the one mountain ski field proposal as detailed in the discussion document.

While in the beginning our initial thoughts where that the whole idea was a great one and that the benefits would be enormous and wide-ranging. After reading the discussion document we began to ask a lot of questions about why some of these proposed benefits haven’t been done already.

We can see few benefits to the merger, these mostly consisted of trimming management and some property assets. The risks however in creating a single north island monopoly with little hope of any future competition would be great.

There no real reason why the two fields owned separately can not work together on Joint Mountain pass, cross mountain tracks and round mountain road transport.

What also concerns us is the thought of 20 years ago when RAL was the only real player in the game, facilities were poor (admitted by the company) pricing had no competitive pressures and service was non-existent. While I do not see this happening in the immediate future, there is a real and significant risk of this occurring, to some degree, in the future if the two fields merged.

We do not support the proposed merger, as it may in the long run be detrimental to skiing in the North Island.

Toby Regan
Snow Sports Facilitator
Wellington Tramping and Mountain Club

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