Booking a Group Ski Holiday
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By their nature, skiing holidays are never the easiest type of holiday to put together. But group ski holidays can be an absolute nightmare. Not only are flights and accommodation needed, plus all the usual travel gubbins such as passports and currency, but the various ski trimmings all need to be organised for a group of people: ski passes, ski hire, ski lessons. But before all that, you have to pick the right ski resort.
Picking the right ski resort is not as easy as it sounds. Every resort is necessarily different and has its own character. But more importantly, each resort will be appropriate for different levels of ability due to the topography of the location. Put simply: some mountains are harder to ski down than others.
Of course, it's not simply the shape of the mountain that dictates a ski resort's suitability for certain ability levels, it is also the provisions made for them. The particular problem that group ski holidays often present is that everyone in the group is of a different ability, and so equal provisions must be made for beginners, intermediates and experts.
Identifying a resort that is good all round can be a challenge, and plenty of time needs to be allowed for research. There are many good websites that offer handy, easy to read guides on difficulty levels of slopes in ski resorts, and the more time spent on these before booking the skiing holiday, the better.
If your group includes people going on their first skiing holidays then it is vitally important there is a good ski school and good nursery slopes. Some ski resorts, such as Tignes in France even offer free lift passes for beginners, reflecting how they will only be using a limited number of slopes whilst they are still learning.
It's not just about difficulty levels and logistics of course, picking the right ski resort has to take into account the budget available. You don't want to pick somewhere that not everyone can afford, so be very diplomatic in choosing your resort. Broadly speaking, the French and Swiss resorts are the most expensive, the Austrian and Italian less so, and Eastern European resorts in Bulgaria, Romania and the like are the cheap options.
Group ski holidays can be a nightmare to organise, but given the right amount of time and research beforehand, they can still be plenty of fun.
Picking the right ski resort is not as easy as it sounds. Every resort is necessarily different and has its own character. But more importantly, each resort will be appropriate for different levels of ability due to the topography of the location. Put simply: some mountains are harder to ski down than others.
Of course, it's not simply the shape of the mountain that dictates a ski resort's suitability for certain ability levels, it is also the provisions made for them. The particular problem that group ski holidays often present is that everyone in the group is of a different ability, and so equal provisions must be made for beginners, intermediates and experts.
Identifying a resort that is good all round can be a challenge, and plenty of time needs to be allowed for research. There are many good websites that offer handy, easy to read guides on difficulty levels of slopes in ski resorts, and the more time spent on these before booking the skiing holiday, the better.
If your group includes people going on their first skiing holidays then it is vitally important there is a good ski school and good nursery slopes. Some ski resorts, such as Tignes in France even offer free lift passes for beginners, reflecting how they will only be using a limited number of slopes whilst they are still learning.
It's not just about difficulty levels and logistics of course, picking the right ski resort has to take into account the budget available. You don't want to pick somewhere that not everyone can afford, so be very diplomatic in choosing your resort. Broadly speaking, the French and Swiss resorts are the most expensive, the Austrian and Italian less so, and Eastern European resorts in Bulgaria, Romania and the like are the cheap options.
Group ski holidays can be a nightmare to organise, but given the right amount of time and research beforehand, they can still be plenty of fun.
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