From creating to managing resorts

Developing tourist facilities in the mountains is often based on an approach evoking its “enhancement” (Guérin, 1984) based on massive investments sustained by heavy funding from the outside. However, local actors, private as public ones, were not passive and they also brought their investments, ideas to develop mountain tourism. Growth of ski resorts has thus been relying on crossed local and global forces, leading to a diversity of local developments. Nevertheless, nowadays, in a strongly competitive context, their becoming is uncertain, specifically linked to cableway companies’ strategies and organisation. Thus, the analyse of three pattern of management, through three cableway managers, involved in Tarentaise’s resorts will aim to highlight the regional factor and its consequences for local development in Savoie.