The Ski Blog

Ski holiday promotions - money saving offers, and great extras available!

The build up to the ski season is well and truly underway. The kids are back at school, there's a real autumnal feel in the air, the first Christmas cards have been spotted in the shops - all the traditional signs that winter is on it's way.

Take a look at the Promotions area on Chalets Direct and you will find well over 300 great offers for this ski season in resorts all over Europe. The promotions include offers such as specialised ski coaching in Tignes, aimed to get intermediate skiers to ski "confidently, easily and effortlessly." More high quality coaching and instruction is available with the Warren Smith Ski academy in Verbier during January 2009.

Money saving offers include offers on flights, free group places, discounts for booking soon, free lift passes and free child places. Discounts are available from 10% off in Morzine, Les Menuires, St Gervais, and 15% off in Grindelwald.

If the idea of a white Christmas is tempting, then there are some attractive festive offers, with traditional turkey dinners and all the trimmings, Brown Bear Lodge for example has availability for their truly special White Christmas in the Portes du Soleil, or Chalet Algonquin in Les Arcs has a fully catered Xmas week, including a 5 course Christmas dinner and present from under the tree at just £550 per adult.

There are also some great short breaks and long weekends available. A long weekend catered ski break, Wednesday to Sunday, in the Grand Massif, just an hour from Geneva airport, for example will set you back just £230.

So if you're wondering where to spend your ski holiday this winter the Promotions and Special Offers could help you make up your mind.

The Ski Blog from Chalets Direct offers help and advice for booking ski or snowboard holidays in the Credit Crunch

New blog provides money-saving tips for winter holidaymakers when booking ski and snowboard breaks.

The recently launched Ski Blog from Chalets Direct aims to provide sound advice and information for people looking for ski and snowboard holidays. The blog went live in late August and has been incorporated into the Chalets Direct Interactive area, which gives holidaymakers a range of tools for searching and researching ski holiday options.

Topics that have been covered so far include Skiing in the Credit Crunch . This two-part post covers ways to save money when booking equipment, tips on prepaid currency cards and suggestions for off peak and mid-week travel. The advice is timely with many skiers and snowboarders now searching for this winter’s holidays but feeling the financial pinch. The blog also points users to the Promotions area where new offers and holiday deals are listed daily.

Another useful area of The Ski Blog deals with ski and snowboard instruction and has useful pointers for what to look for when booking ski holidays for beginners. It advises doing research and preparation beforehand to maximise the holiday experience. The What Makes a Great…ski lesson post includes input from the British Alpine Ski Schools, and draws on their research into ski teaching methodology.

According to a spokesperson for Chalets Direct:

“We hope that the Ski Blog will become a useful place for visitors to find out about skiing, snowboarding, summer holidays, things that are happening in the industry, and general advice on holidays in mountain resorts.

We want to build a resource, so that people everywhere, from novice to expert, can tap into the experience and knowledge of other skiers or boarders.”

The Ski Blog can be found by going to www.chaletsdirect.com and clicking on the link to the blog. The direct address for the Ski Blog is http://skiblog.chaletsdirect.com

Skiing in the Credit Crunch - part 2

Back in June we posted our first Skiing in the Credit Crunch article. Now that autumn's here and the annual ski holiday is much more in the forefront of people's minds, we thought we'd give you some more ideas on how to get out on the slopes for less.

Travel money: Prepaid currency cards are now big news for travellers. Over the last few months more and more of these have hit the market, from mainstream banks like Lloyds TSB to the Post Office and Tesco. The principle is simple, you get one of these cards, load it up with euros or dollars, and then use it like any other credit or debit card when you're away. Withdrawals from foreign cash machines are cheaper than using your normal debit card, if you lose it you can get a replacement without risking having any cash stolen, and quite often they can be topped up online - like a pay as you go mobile.

There are now quite a lot to choose from - take a look at the Prepaid Cards section on Money Supermarket for a good overview. Some have set-up fees, or monthly fees, some will charge more than others for withdrawals, so it pays to shop around. They will usually take at least a week to 10 days to organise so don't leave it till the last minute.

Dynamic Currency Conversion: Nowadays it is not unusual to be given the option to pay in local currency or sterling when paying by credit card abroad. Always choose the local currency. This new process is called Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC). The retailer or ATM invites you to pay in sterling and then does the exchange rate at an unfavourable rate, which costs you money. Research by Caxton FX, a foreign currency dealer and supplier of the very competitive Caxton fx Prepaid card, has shown that during last ski season "around £30,000 was wasted at just five of the most popular ski resorts in Europe through DCC."

Buy Equipment in the UK: With the strength of the euro against the pound you're unlikely to find good equipment deals in your ski resort. If you're looking to get your own kit then buying at home before you go will usually be cheaper. If you know exactly the make and model of ski/board you want you can always check out prices at home or away, Snow and Rock for example will give you a good idea of the UK price. And if you really know what you're looking for Ebay is also a useful place to look.

Rent in Advance: If you're renting your equipment it really pays to shop around, and booking in advance can give you some good discounts. Intersport, who operate in France, Switzerland and Austria, are offering good incentives for advance booking, Ski Set (France only) give at least 20% off for online bookings. It's also worth looking at the websites of the resort shops - many will also be offering good deals if you book direct with them.

Off Season Holidays: If you don't have to go in February (when half terms for the whole of Europe fall in the same 2 weeks), then look at prices outside peak times. January is often overlooked but can quite often have the best conditions, quiet pistes and cheaper deals on flights and ferries. The week before Christmas is also a good time for bargains. With a late Easter next year there could also be some good offers for March.

Go Mid-Week: If you're not tied to a Saturday to Saturday holiday, look at bucking the trend and taking advantage of quieter roads, and cheaper flights and ferry prices during the week. Many Chalets Direct holiday providers can offer flexible stays with arrivals and departures on different days of the week. It also means that you can ski on the Saturday when everyone is packing up and going, and you've got the pistes to yourself. 

With planning and some forethought, you can make savings on your ski holidays.

What makes a great...ski lesson?

Sunday morning - the first day of your ski holiday. After an epic battle to get equipment, lift passes and children sorted out in time, you finally get to your ski school meeting point. You obediently join your group, with about 11 others, receive a short greeting from your instructor and head off to the cable car. You spend the next 2 hours in a long snake behind said instructor, getting cursory comments every now and then which you hope will improve your technique and make you ski like a god. Despite doing this day after day, you don't feel any better about your skiing at the end of it than when you started. Sound familiar?

Sadly a lot of us experience the above scenario - we'd like to improve but the time and money invested in lessons doesn't bring about results. So we end up thinking that maybe we're not fit/adventurous/sporty enough, maybe skiing or snowboarding is something that we'll never be good at. We resign ourselves to getting down the mountain in our own fashion - and it doesn't really matter if we're not great at it, we only do it for one or two weeks a year after all.

Ski and snowboard lessons should be something that you want to keep going back to. They should help you learn how to handle difficult situations - steeper slopes, ice, heavy bumpy snow, off piste, white-out conditions, jumps. Nobody can get better at doing these without practice and guidance.

Hugh Monney is the Director of BASS, the British Alpine Ski School, which has schools in several resorts in France and in St Moritz in Switzerland. Hugh has spent many years developing the teaching techniques used by the BASS schools. The BASS approach is holistic - taking into account the psychological as well as the physical aspects of learning to ski and snowboard.

"Our teachers are skilful, experienced and sympathetic. We like to help people solve their problems and discover how to have fun, and we know how to make it happen."

Group sizes are kept small, with a maximum of 6 people, and BASS insists that humour is a key ingredient for success - "a caring, humourous approach makes the lesson a pleasure for everyone involved. The effectiveness of the sessions are dramatically increased by this important aspect of communication" says Hugh.

BASS also promises that teaching is only in English and that a shared mother tongue "is a must if teachers are to help people make the best progress and understand the subtleties of these great sports."

Getting good instruction can improve your ski holiday by leaps and bounds, and a good instructor should be able to tailor his teaching to suit your way of learning. Coming out of a lesson feeling that you aren't really that good says more about the instructor than your ability - even if you're never going to be Herman Maier, an instructor should be able to get you to work on something that will improve the overall effect.

So don't give up on lessons but do shop around and make sure that you get the right kind of instruction for you. Points to bear in mind are:

1. Group sizes - make sure you know what the maximum group size should be, and is this guaranteed by the ski school, or do they make exceptions in busy periods? 
2. Ability levels - how are levels assessed by the ski school, and what happens if you're in a group which is going too fast or too slow for comfort?
3. Group lessons may not be the best solution for you - no matter how good the teacher a group lesson will usually have to be at the pace of the slowest. If you worry about being bored or holding people up, or if you don't feel comfortable learning in a group scenario, then private lessons may be the better option.

Learning new techniques is fun. Learning how to stay in control brings with it a tremendous sense of achievement and knowing that you can tackle any slope, in all sorts of conditions, does wonders for your self-confidence. Skiing and snowboarding aren't mysterious dark arts whose secrets are only imparted to a select few - so next time you're the 12th person in line behind the instructor, it may be time to change the instructor.

RSS feeds from Chalets Direct

Now there's another way to get the latest Chalets Direct news direct to your desktop.

Two RSS feeds are available - one for the Ski Blog, and one which shows a selection of our Promotions. The promotions feed is updated every week. There are currently close to 300 promos and special offers available on Chalets Direct, with some very tempting ski holiday offers for this winter including free flights  and free child places on holidays in La Tania in the Three Valleys, free lift passes in Les Gets, and bonus group discounts in St Anton.

The RSS feeds mean that you can get the latest news delivered to you - all you need to do is to subscribe to the feeds and they will update automatically each time something changes. You can subscribe using an online reader such as the Google or Yahoo readers, or use one which can be downloaded. You may even find you already have a reader without even realising it - the latest versions of Outlook and Internet Explorer now have inbuilt RSS capabilities.

But if you're starting to look for this winter's ski holiday keep an eye on the Promotions area - this is where you can find some great ideas, maybe a champagne week in Paradiski, a girls only ski clinic week, special mini breaks for Christmas and much more.

You can browse through all the promotions available or search for offers for specific dates or areas.

So with the temperatures starting to turn autumnal, the countdown to winter has begun.

Chalets Direct launches Interactive Area for Skiers and Snowboarders

The leading ski website offers more ways of finding accommodation for independent travellers

September is traditionally the time when people start getting serious about booking their ski holiday. In response to this, the leading ski website Chalets Direct has grouped together a variety of services to form a new interactive area for people looking for ski and snowboard breaks. Called simply Chalets Direct Interactive, the new section provides holidaymakers with more tools to find their ski accommodation, in addition to traditional searching and browsing. Visitors can also use the interactive area to find and research holidays.

Chalets Direct Interactive includes message boards, resort reviews, a ski blog and The Solutions Room, where users can post up their holiday requirements and wait for offers to come back to them. The site also provides a Promotions area where visitors can view promotions and special offers for specific dates or resorts. The aim is to give independent skiers and snowboarders a better choice when looking for their winter holiday and to provide more ways of getting results.

Some key features of the interactive area include the Solutions Room, a unique bulletin board where people looking for holiday accommodation can say what they're looking for. Chalets Direct members can then reply to them to either match their requirements or propose alternatives. Launched in 1999, the Solutions Room has proved a useful tool for both holidaymakers and advertisers. A post made in the morning will usually have attracted several replies within a few hours, by the evening there will often be more than 20 proposals for the enquirer to choose from. Further development of the Solutions Room is currently taking place and enhanced features will be introduced later this autumn.

The Resort News and Reviews area means visitors can see what others are saying about resorts. This section is also an area to get news “as it happens” – with current bulletins about weather and snow conditions or upcoming events.

The Ski Blog, launched this summer, is a general discussion area focusing on ski industry events and news, with useful advice and hints for booking holidays in the mountains. The What Makes a great…Beginners Week post for example, gives helpful hints for first time skiers and snowboarders.

Chalets Direct Interactive also has a jobs board and Q & A area for people wanting to do a ski season or a long term let.

The interactive features can be found by clicking on the home page of www.chaletsdirect.com

What makes a great....Apres Ski Bar?

For many people the après ski bar is as important a feature of their ski holiday as the skiing itself.

Snow Party by Charlie Adam

It's traditional, it prolongs the feelgood effects of the physical exercise, it's a reward after a day in the great outdoors. It's getting together with like-minded people with whom you really have something in common, it's powder discussions and piste talks, it's like walking into your local, where everyone remembers you and says hello. It's meeting and making new friends, it's an exercise in pulling power but there's no shame if you crash and burn.

It's a key ingredient for a memorable holiday -  years afterwards ski areas may blur into one great mountain panorama, but that time you danced on the tables in ski boots will stand out as a massive fun-filled frivolous highlight.

Obviously apres ski bars will vary across national borders but from Courchevel to Colorado the main elements will be the same. And those elements will be the same if you're 25 or 65 - it's just the proportions that will change.

The key ingredients that will get punters strolling in at 4pm and rolling out at 8pm or later are service, value and music. A simple formula which works time and time again. Adding in extras like mountain views can help but are not essential - since ski resorts began some of the most memorable bars have mushroomed in basement, windowless venues - which are cheaper to lease but require more imagination to establish the ambiance.

Friendly service is essential - at the risk of sounding controversial this is possibly why the Austrians are generally much better at apres ski than the French. We need smiling faces who are happy to have our business and will not look down on us if we are not the best skiers on the mountain. We also need the service to be good.

Value for money is important - it means people will buy 2, 3 or even more rounds rather than have one drink and walk out - a killer for any apres ski atmosphere! Value doesn't always mean the cheapest prices - and canny bar owners have already worked this out. Get the mixture right and people will want to stay, and it won't matter if prices are slightly more than the empty bar down the road. Happy Hours, ski videos, the weekly race sponsored by the bar - all these elements give people another reason to walk in and hang out.

Music - a very subjective area, but crucial when it comes to creating an atmosphere. The success of scores of apres bars has been based on the quality of their music. Many bars will have resident bands - cool ski bums with guitars who can knock out popular tunes that everyone can sing along to. Music doesn't always need to be familiar - the Austrians (again) have made it cool to like oompah bands - at least after a few steins of beer with schnapps chasers. This is possibly another area where the French are at a disadvantage - Edith Piaf and the greatest hits of Jacques Brel will never be great background music.

A great apres ski bar will not make up for lack of snow, terrible accommodation, or splitting up with your girlfriend because she can get downhill faster than you, however the apres ski experience can certainly be the cherry on the top - and make a good ski holiday a truly great one.