Here are our top tips on how to pay less for your ski holiday.
Go Low
The biggest difference in prices across the board will obviously depend on what point in the season you travel. Before December, prices for everything from flights to accommodation and lift passes will typically be lower, and sometimes considerably lower – less than half the price of peak weeks over New Year and in the February school holidays. Prices can also be low in mid to late January and after the Easter holidays. Of course, the important thing to be wary of if you travel early or late season is that snow cover is likely to be good at your chosen destination.
Be Lift-Pass Savvy
The lift pass can be a big part of your holiday cost – in fact, in the more extreme cases, it’s possible that your lift pass will actually cost more than your flight and accommodation combined. But lift ticket pricing has never been more “fluid” as the pricing model gets ever more like that for flight or hotel booking. This “dynamic pricing” is being led by US resorts, inevitably, but it is also being increasingly seen in Europe, particularly in the French Alps. A rising number of areas, including the huge Portes du Soleil, have offered discounts of 10–20% on tickets if you buy them online and in the autumn before you travel. Others offer “flash sales” and other promotions. Other points to be aware of include very different age bands for children from one resort to the next.
Self-Drive…
Self-driving to the Alps is normally one of the cheapest ways to get to the slopes – so long as you fill the car so the fuel costs are divided up.
“It’s easy to drive to the French Alps from the UK – it’s all motorway. Going by Eurotunnel or Ferry is cheaper, and you don’t have all the hidden extras with flying like UK airport car parking charges, luggage and skis carriage is getting pretty expensive with many of the budget airlines,” said Amelia Warner of Ski Collection (skicollection.co.uk).
You can save further costs by avoiding the motorway tolls and perhaps diverting via Luxembourg for some of Western Europe’s cheapest fuel, but you’ll need to do your maths to work out if the longer route and travel time is worthwhile.
… Or Take The Bus
Coach holidays consistently offer the lowest prices for ski packages, and it’s also worth factoring in the fact that most can offer connections from close to your home and will deposit you at your accommodation. So there’s none of the hassle of unloading and reloading bags about six times in the flying process, nor the additional costs (and further hassle) of shuttles and connecting services. A further argument in favour of taking the bus is that many companies offer overnight services, so you arrive in resort ready to ski the next morning and can sometimes fit up to eight days skiing into your weekend-to-weekend ski trip – 33% more than your average trip, and all for less money. Result! Ski Weekends, for example, were offering a week half board in Les 3 Vallées from £239, a saving of £100, at the time of going to press (skiweekends.com).
Fill An Apartment
Credit – OT Morzine Jarry Tripelon
OK, it’s not rocket science but simple maths again – if you fill an apartment for four, six or eight people, the total cost divides up into a lower cost per person than if you are sharing the cost of empty beds on top of your own cost.
Rent Savvy Too
Ski rentals have also gone in a similar direction. If you roll up in resort to buy your rentals, you’ll pay whatever the maximum is that the shopkeeper can ask, but if you look at the competing deals offered if you reserve your gear and pre-pay online, your perfect kit should be sat there waiting for you at perhaps half the price of the walk-in cost.
Book Early Or Travel Midweek
It’s an obvious one, but if you do plan to fly you need to book those flights as early as you can. If you can grab your seats as soon as flights are announced, they are often very affordable indeed with companies like EasyJet, but those costs sky rocket on peak dates very quickly. You can still find bargains closer to departure date if you’re prepared to travel midweek and early or late in the day, but that can cause transfer complications so is rarely ideal (probably why they’re cheap …).
Avoid Staying At The Big Resorts (But You Can Still Ski At Them)
We’re all tempted to book in to a well-known resort for our ski holiday, but to a greater or lesser extent you are often just paying for the name. As most big resorts are located in big ski areas, to which smaller villages are also connected, you can often stay more cheaply in a “satellite village” near the famous name destination, but not quite actually in it. Sometimes, quite often in fact, doing so has practical advantages as well as cost savings – a usual one being that the lack of crowds means you can get on the slopes more quickly and earlier than those struggling through the bottlenecks at that big name resort next door. Some holiday companies, most notably Peak Retreats (peakretreats.co.uk) which specialises in smaller, unspoilt villages in the giant French ski regions, have grown up to specialise in this very area.
Consider Where You Spend The Most
Pick the right holiday for you! Beginner skiers don’t need a big resort and don’t want to be spending their money on expensive lift passes for runs they’ll never ski, so choose somewhere small where the ski school has a good reputation and a fair price. Big groups of friends can end up spending a fortune on food and drink in large resorts, so a trip to a duty-free or low-cost destination such as Andorra, Italy’s Livigno or perhaps Eastern Europe might be a good choice if you’re more interested in partying than snowsports (although, to be fair, Andorra and Livigno have plenty of both!).
Organise A Group Ski Holiday
One way to get a free or discounted holiday yourself is to organise a group trip and grab the “free place” offered by most tour operators. Of course, for this to work the people you’re travelling with need to not know (naughty!) or not care that you’re getting the free place because they’re all paying, and you may find yourself paying for your free place in other ways – by taking all the flack if something doesn’t go well, such as travel delays or poor rooms in the hotel, for example.
Check Out Resort Deals Online
Resort websites are a good place to sniff out a bargain. Most run promotions through the season (and particularly early and late season) which often include your lift pass, and sometimes other holiday perks too, for little more than the cost of the accommodation if you book direct.
Don’t Write Off The Tour Operators
Although it’s generally assumed that tour op packages work out to be more expensive than booking the component parts of your ski holiday yourself, that’s not always the case, and while tour operators will argue that there are “no longer any late booking deals”, there are in fact both early and late booking deals to look out for.
The early deals often include savings on lift passes, rentals, ski school or childcare – often a buy-one-get-one-free deal which helps bring overall costs down. Late bookings, if you’re not too bothered about where you’re going, are just cheaper.
Finally, What Not To Scrimp On :
Your insurance policy – make sure everything you’re going to want to do on the slopes including freeride and the park are well covered.
Your equipment – be safe, comfortable and warm, or what’s the point ?
Your food and drink – you are on holiday, after all !
