Statement on BASI Courses Planned for Italy in March - 08/03/2020

As we stated in our message dated Thursday 5th March 2020, we have been monitoring the Coronavirus situation in Northern Italy. We also stated that if the situation changed, so too would our response. The situation has now changed.

The Italian authorities have already placed Lombardy under quarantine; however, we have now been made aware that all ski resorts in the Aosta Valley will close their lifts with immediate effect until the end of April. The rationale, as we understand it, is that authorities are concerned by the volume of people travelling north of Lombardy and the impact this may have upon contamination and further spread across Europe.

We will therefore not be sending our Trainers into the Aosta Valley to deliver courses that were planned to start tomorrow Monday 9th March 2020 and Monday 16th March 2020 in Courmayeur and Pila. 

We also have taken the decision to cancel the courses that were planned to run in Tonale on Monday 23rd March due to proximity to the Lombardy region.

Our advice to students impacted by these cancellations is to use their travel insurance to recoup as much of their outlay as possible. However, seeing as the underlying reason for these cancellations is clearly extraordinary, BASI will be as flexible as possible with regards our usual cancellation policy and will endeavour to find new course places for those impacted and to do what we can to minimise the financial impact to students.

This decision does not currently affect any of the other courses which we have planned across the Alps. We will take swift action if the situation changes.