The subject is still taboo and local Haut-Savoyards don't address it openly yet. The reality is that the Brits are in the process of invading their places and spoiling their culture to a point of no return.
I'm talking about my native valley of Morzine, that sits about one hour away from Geneva airport and a cheap Easyjet flight to London. Every one knows it will boil sometime, but no one can tell when and how badly the ensuing explosion might be.
The Brits discovered the place in the 1990s and have bought everything they could lay their hands ever since (full disclosure: I sold my house to them in 1989...). Faced with this onslaught of “invaders”, the local population has felt totally powerless and quite awkward as they've been receiving some economic rewards on the one hand, but all along, had that sinking feeling that they were “selling-out” ...
This conflict, in a large part, is what explains why the crisis has been simmering for quite sometime and has remained largely underground with no external signs. Because of their superior purchasing power, Brits have gobbled up all the real estate that was in their sight and have driven the prices sky high, preventing long time young locals from being able to contemplate buying property if it couldn't be passed on to them by their own families.
Sometimes, locals had no choice but sell because this new frontier economy has also been driving both the estate taxes and the French net-worth tax ("impôt sur la fortune") so high that selling was too many times the locals' sole way out. That what could be called in the US Rockies the “Aspen syndrome” which is precisely what happens today in my hometown of Park City, where long-time locals and even "small" millionaires are displaced by billionaires!
If that was not bad enough, Brits don't seem willing to integrate into French society. They stay among their own English-speaking clusters, don't learn French and are just willing to send their kids to French schools and get their health care on the back of their French tax-paying neighbors. Only bi-cultural couples (with one local or French spouse) will integrate and that will be it. This said, it still gets much worse; take the huge number of “catered chalets” that are the Brits favorite substitute for hotels and inns; those are run from the UK, with the help of British employees, often using UK provisions ferried across the Chunnel.
The chalets' staff isn't subject to French Labor Law and it's perfectly clear that these businesses are operated at a totally unfair advantage. When I question friends and family about this tilted playing field, they throw their hands up in the air and respond that nothing can be done about it and that the Brits are taking advantage of some loopholes built into the European Union's legislation. In addition to these “chalets”, there are in-grown British businesses like airport shuttles that are providing seamless transit convenience to their countrymen, bypassing existing French services such as cabs and scheduled public transportation.
Additional and specialized services (condo ski rentals delivery, copied from their U.S. business models) can also be found and, again, are unfairly competing against long-established and tax-paying businesses entities. How long will that conundrum last? It depends first on whether the “invaders” will be able to put up with the spartan life in rural towns like Morzine during the long off-season. Chamonix, has a much larger town, more things to do and a shorter shoulder-season.
So the question is, how long can the London well-educated, super-spoiled gentry will be willing to put up with the deadly mountain off season? Then will there be a point when the “honeymoon” between the Savoyard and the English be suddenly over when the benefits available to locals are dwindling. Then, unless both communities harmoniously fuse together, there could be harsh confrontations between long-established locals and foreign newcomers.
Time will tell, of course how things may play out, so please, just stay tuned!
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