Facing a significant drop in orders, the Doppelmayr Garaventa Group has made the difficult decision to cut about six percent of its global workforce. Out of the nearly 200 positions eliminated, 95 are at the firm’s Austrian headquarters. Prior to the layoffs, Doppelmayr employed approximately 3,400 people at sites circling the globe, including at North American bases in Salt Lake City, Utah and Saint-Jérôme, Quebec.
Globally, around 50 percent of Doppelmayr’s business happens at ski resorts. When other leisure and tourism segments are included, that number grows to 80 percent. In the last complete year before Covid shutdowns, North American lift installations included places hit hard in the pandemic economy: theme parks, cruise ports and sports stadiums. Even urban gondolas, which offer the promise of socially-distanced transportation, depend on municipal and regional tax revenues to be built.
“Despite a few attractive individual projects, the order situation has decreased significantly in recent months, and an uncertain winter with few or postponed investments in cable cars is approaching us,” said Thomas Pichler, Managing Director of Doppelmayr Holding SE. “We now have to adapt our workforce to the changed order situation.”
In North America, the company saw all its orders from Alterra Mountain Company, Boyne Resorts and Vail Resorts postponed earlier this year. While the upcoming 2020-21 winter will hopefully be successful for many ski areas, Doppelmayr’s customers again face immense uncertainty at a time when 2021 capital projects need to be planned and financed. Doppelmayr is optimistic that a headcount reduction now will enable it to survive and thrive as travel recovers. “We assume that with this new workforce we will have a stable number of employees for the next few years,” noted Pichler.
