Criteria

The media response and pressure from ski area managers who operated with correct figures, eventually led the ski resort associations (after initial denials) to conceding deficiencies regarding the disclosures on the length of runs. Yet it was already announced in February 2013 that by April, uniform criteria would be developed by the department responsible for the ropeway industry at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (WKO).

The WKO then actually took the initiative and developed rules for calculating the length of runs . These were agreed upon with the respective associations in Germany and Switzerland, and also submitted to the committees of the two international ropeway associations OITAF and F.I.A.N.E.T. (international ski resorts association) for decision. They were adopted on the FIANET Congress in Prague in October 2013. However, these rules are just recommendations and not mandatory. They are:

• For the length of the piste, the effective length (inclined) is decisive. The length is to be measured in the middle of the piste.
• At a diversion, only the lengths of effective diversions are measured.
• There are no extra amounts of any kind.

Another point that was part of the original recommendations of the WKO did not find its way into the recommendation of the international organisation:

• Segments of pistes can only be counted twice, if those piste segments are marked as two pistes (e.g. identical segment of a black and red piste, that is marked as black and red and splits up after a few hundred meters).

The WKO as well as the Schweizer Seilbahnverband (SBS – Suisse Ropeway Association) kept that point in the recommendations which they sent to their members during the summer term. The result of that is that there are still different measuring systems. The following illustrates this: