Ski Line limited, founded by husband and wife team Angus and Sarah Kinloch in 1995 was one of the first ski specialist travel agencies and offered mainly ski chalet holidays via Teletext until launching their first web site www.skiline.co.uk back in 1998.
The business grew quickly the strongest market being groups who still mainly book ski chalet holidays. The 1990’s where exciting times, chalets were starting to be built with ensuite bathrooms and were cropping up in ski resorts that hadn’t previously offered them. Clients could now book ski in/ out chalets and the product was starting to move up market with more and more skiers choosing a ski chalet over a traditional ski holiday in a hotel.
Everything was looking rosy for Ski Line until 2007, the start of economic down turn. Our group leaders were now booking smaller groups, and perhaps self-catered apartments and drive to the Alps in order to save money.
We searched for new suppliers and found Club Med. The problem was that a Club Med skiing holiday was even more expensive than our ski chalets so how could we justify the difference?
Club Med had been the pioneers of the “All inclusive holiday” and the cost of a Club Med skiing holiday included a lift pass, 6 full days skiing lessons, all meals, all drinks from the bar, flights and transfers. Adding up the costs of these additional extras on a ski chalet holiday made Club Med look wonderful value for money.
It wasn’t until our first clients started returning from their first Club Med holiday that we realised we had found an alternative skiing holiday that our clients really loved. Comments about the high standard of the food, lobsters and oysters appeared on the menu, foie gras and wonderful table wine, large spacious bedrooms and ski in ski out locations…. In fact all the things that had generated some negative feedback on our ski chalets holidays were now the items that our clients started enthusing about. After the first year, nearly 85% of the clients we had booked with Club Med had re-booked for the following winter, many had invited friends along too and our group bookings were safe again.
Today around 1 in 7 of our clients are booking Club Med ski holidays with skiline.co.uk making Ski Line one of the biggest agents for Club Med in Europe.
Since 2007 Club Med have opened new ski in ski out hotels in Valmorel, Val Thorens, Pragelato in Italy and Peisey Vallandry. Construction has just started in Samoëns in the Grand Massive which will open for the 2018 ski season.