Starting this year, the municipality decided to impose a broader regime on the use of Cerro Catedral by resident skiers, who will enjoy extended hours. in access to all means of lift, despite the fact that they pay promotional values, well below the rate applied to tourists.
The concessionaire company, Catedral Alta Patagonia, intends to maintain the restrictions that were in effect for years and that guarantee access to residents from 11 a.m.every morning, when the rest can go on the slopes from 9 a.m. But Mayor Walter Cortés rejected their proposal and maintained the criteria established by the previous management.
He resident pass It must be processed and paid by clients several months in advance. The subscription for those that can be used next winter expired in December and had a cost of 155,400 pesossince it is contractually equivalent to the adult day pass rate, at the value in force at that time, which will surely have a drastic adjustment before July.
Through a resolution issued yesterday, the mayor rejected the hierarchical appeal presented by Capsa against resolution 69/23 of the Hill Regulatory Entity (Eamcec), which last October had approved the “general conditions for the purchase of the 2024 resident ticket.”
Over there established a new guideline according to which the Bariloche public who carried the preferential pass could ascend the mountain from the opening of the complex not only with the Cóndor trunk chairlift (one of the oldest on the hill, and with little capacity) but also by the modern Sextuple Express chairlift.
The manager of Capsa, Manuel Pérez Diez, said yesterday that this change was a unilateral decision by the municipality and that it is bound to cause complications in the operation of the mountain and in the attention to tourists.
He explained that historically, as established in the 2004 contractual readjustment, the concessionaire enabled the entry of resident skiers from 9 a.m. on the Cóndor chairlift. While from 11 in the morning all other media were available for use.
Now they will be able to anticipate and upload by the most popular means from 9 a.m. Pérez Diez said that it is a decision that “brings complications” because residents come in large numbersand although there is no saturation in the media because the new investments allowed the Cathedral’s capacity to be greatly expanded, if it happens that “They take over the parking lot, the access route and other infrastructure that does not depend on the company”.
Growing demand
Pérez Diez pointed out that The number of residents who process their pass is around 11,000 and “increases year by year”. They can go to the Cathedral with freedom of days and times except during the two weeks of winter holidays in Buenos Aires, when the mountains and all of Bariloche register the peak of tourist influx.
The representative of the concessionaire said that “not all 11,000 go together, but there are weekend days in which 6,000 residents or more enter.”
According to Pérez Diez, the benefit contemplated in Cathedral for the people of Bariloche, and regulated in the concession contract, ““It does not exist in any other ski center in Argentina” for local populations. He pointed out that the pass at a promotional price “is a product that has restrictions” and cannot be guaranteed the same benefit received by the visitor, who at last October prices paid 46,000 pesos per day and who will surely pay more than 100 thousand a day. starting next July.
According to the Capsa manager, what What is at stake is the priority of “not degrading the service to tourists.” He said that it is “a concept” and that “it deserves another analysis.”
The reasons for each part
In its frustrated appeal before Cortés, the company had said that the decision of the Eamcec board of directors was “arbitrary”, contrary to the law and “to the elementary principles of contractual administrative law.”
In response, the Entity’s legal counsel said that the residents who obtain their pass “fit into the skier segment,” and The board “interpreted and executed the contract taking into consideration the objective satisfaction of the public interest.”“, without postponing the benefit of the user and the population in general.”
He pointed out that the board “acted within the framework of its powers” and that changing an older means of transportation for the six-fold express chairlift, which is “more comfortable, faster and with greater carrying capacity, aims to improve user service” and that that service “remains reasonable with the value of the rate.”
Capsa had first requested a reconsideration from the regulatory body itself, which was unsuccessful.. The same arguments of that resolution were now invoked by the mayor to ratify what was decided by Eamcec and reject the company’s proposal.