Compagnie des Alpes Brand Guidelines: A 1989 Ski Operator Behind Val d’Isère & Parc Astérix

Concessions, Tarentaise lifts and a Paris listing.

Compagnie des Alpes was set up in January 1989 by the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, the French public financial institution, through its development arm, French Wikipedia says. Its job at the start was to bring French ski-area businesses together — beginning with Tignes and Peisey-Vallandry — so that a larger group could share experience and pay for investment, and more broadly to support activity in the mountains.

Growth came through public-service concessions, the contracts under which French mountain communes hand the running of their lifts and slopes to an operator. From 1991, French Wikipedia says, the company won the concessions for La Plagne, Les Arcs and the Grands Montets area at Chamonix. It joined the Second Marché of the Paris Bourse in the 1990s and used the listing to take stakes in more Alpine areas, including Les Menuires. At the end of 1996 it moved abroad with Courmayeur and other areas in Italy’s Aosta Valley, and added Flaine and the neighbouring Grand Massif villages in France. Méribel followed in 2000, along with a minority stake in Téléverbier, the Swiss operator at Verbier, and a stake in the Saas-Fee lift company came in 2001. Both Swiss holdings were sold in 2009.

Later additions in France included Serre Chevalier in 2004 and, from 1 October 2007, the lift company at Val d’Isère, through an agreement with the local holding company SOFIVAL that also brought minority stakes in La Rosière, Valmorel and Avoriaz. Megève joined in 2014. French Wikipedia says the company was privatised in 2004, while naming the Caisse des dépôts as its main shareholder; its shares trade on Euronext Paris under the code CDA, English Wikipedia says.

From ski lifts to Parc Astérix and the Futuroscope.

The ski business was only half the plan. In June 2002, French Wikipedia says, Compagnie des Alpes bought Grévin & Cie — owner of the Musée Grévin wax museum in Paris and of theme parks including Parc Astérix — through a takeover bid that began hostile and ended friendly, with the aim of spreading its risk beyond the winter season. From then on the group ran two divisions, one for ski areas and one for leisure parks.

The parks side grew by purchase. In 2006 the group took over the Walibi parks in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, along with Bellewaerde in Belgium. In 2011 it became the largest shareholder in the Futuroscope near Poitiers, with 45 percent, and its holding became a majority in 2020. Familypark in Austria followed in 2019 and Belantis in Germany in April 2025. Some parks were sold along the way, and three Grévin museums opened outside France, French Wikipedia says. In 2016 the group opened Chaplin’s World, a museum in Charlie Chaplin’s former home, the Manoir de Ban at Corsier in Switzerland, which it had said in January 2011 that it would run. A subsidiary, Les Productions du parc, designs and builds attractions and shows for its sites, including the Défi de César ride at Parc Astérix, the same source says.

The group has also moved into lodging and holiday sales. It took control of Travelfactory, the online ski-holiday seller behind the Travelski brand, in January 2018. Skift, the travel trade site, reported on 11 January 2018 that the group had taken a 73 percent stake with a path to full control within four years, and described Compagnie des Alpes as the biggest ski-resort operator in the world. In 2022 it bought a majority of MMV, a hotel and holiday-residence operator in the Alps, and in 2024 it added SOMERM, a lift assembly and maintenance company, and Groupe Urban, which runs five-a-side football and padel centres in France. In 2025, French Wikipedia says, it relaunched a night train to the Alps, the Travelski Night Express, through Travelfactory.

For skiers the group has tried a shared product across its resorts: in 2008 it launched Holiski, an annual subscription valid at ten of its ski areas, with an access badge at the lifts and ski days billed the following month, French Wikipedia says.

Mountains, lifts and the companies that run them.

Ski resort operators sell a place before they sell a product, so much of their public image is built from the mountain itself: lifts, groomed runs and snow-covered peaks, photographed and published by the companies themselves. The corporate site of Alterra Mountain Company goes a step further, printing map coordinates beside its mountain images. Each resort’s own pages carry the practical layer — lift and run status, webcams and a trail map. When Deer Valley added 200 acres and seven runs for its 2026/27 season, Alterra announced them by acreage and by the name of the new lift.

Naming is a large part of the work. Trails, lifts and bowls carry their own names, and new lifts are announced by name: Deer Valley’s Keetley Express and Hail Peak Express are two from its recent expansion. Above the resorts sit pass products. Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass and Alterra’s Ikon Pass, launched in January 2018, group many mountains under one season pass, and Alterra says the Ikon Pass now reaches more than 70 destinations. Pass tiers, partner days and reservation rules become part of the vocabulary skiers learn.

Digital tools extend that system. Resort websites invite visitors to download a mobile app, and some groups have bought the technology behind their sales: Alterra says it acquired Aspenware, a resort e-commerce and technology business, in May 2022. At Alterra, loyalty is framed through pass benefits, such as an extra night for pass holders who stay three nights at Deer Valley and discounted lift tickets for friends and family.

Behind the resort names sits a quieter corporate layer of pages on owners, leadership, values and portfolios. When Alterra was named in 2018, The Denver Post reported that the aim was not to forge a new brand but to build a platform that would elevate the individuality of each resort. Deer Valley’s own website keeps its name up front and links to Alterra Mountain Company in its footer.

A group name behind resort and park names.

Concessions can also end. In January 2020 the group lost the contract for Les Deux Alpes, which it had won in 2009, French Wikipedia says. In August 2024 the commune of Tignes decided to part with STGM, the Compagnie des Alpes subsidiary that ran its lifts, when its concession ran out on 1 June 2026, and to work instead through a local public company shared with neighbouring Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise, Le Dauphiné Libéré reported in May 2025. French Wikipedia lists the Tignes company among the group’s ski operations only until June 2026.

French Wikipedia describes the group today as running around ten French ski areas, directly or through stakes — among them La Plagne, Les Arcs, Val d’Isère and Méribel, with the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc at Chamonix as a holding — alongside 13 leisure sites that include Parc Astérix, the Futuroscope and the Musée Grévin. Its management arm has also signed advisory contracts abroad, including its first in China in 2015, at the Thaiwoo resort, the same source says.

For a design guide, Compagnie des Alpes shows a group name standing behind well-known resort and park names. Compare SkiStar, the Swedish resort operator, and Zermatt, an Alpine resort name across the border in Switzerland. For this guide we use a glacier blue, an alpine ink and a larch gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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