The Story of Chalets Direct: 25+ Years of Skiing, People and Change

Chalets Direct was founded in 1999 with a simple idea: make it easier for people to find ski accommodation and speak directly to the people who run it.

It began on a ski trip to Chamonix and an idea that seemed quite simple at the time.

It was 1999.

The internet was still young. Most businesses didn’t have websites. Booking a holiday online was something of a novelty, and for many people internet access still meant sitting in front of a computer waiting for a dial-up connection.

Two of the people who would go on to found Chalets Direct were in Chamonix, looking at hotels and talking to local accommodation providers about the possibilities of the new internet.

They had spent the day looking at how local businesses could use the web.

Towards the end of the day, they drove out to Les Praz, a small village a few miles from Chamonix.

They stopped near the village church.

And that’s where the idea came.

Why not create a website specifically for ski accommodation – and make it easy and affordable for owners and operators to present themselves online?

More importantly, why put another company between the person looking for a ski holiday and the person providing it?

That was the beginning of Chalets Direct.

And, more than 25 years later, that original idea still sits at the heart of the business.

It wasn’t meant to be another travel agency

The thinking behind Chalets Direct was always slightly different.

The founders were seasoned skiers. They understood that a ski holiday wasn’t simply a transaction involving a room for seven nights.

The accommodation mattered.

The resort mattered.

The skiing mattered.

And the people running the accommodation mattered.

So why shouldn’t the holidaymaker be able to talk directly to them?

That became one of the fundamental principles of Chalets Direct:

Don’t come between the holidaymaker and the people providing the holiday.

We still believe that today.

We don’t take commission on bookings. We don’t need to become the travel agent between the two sides. Instead, we provide the platform, the search, the information and the opportunities for holidaymakers and accommodation providers to find each other.

Two founders – and a business that stayed personal

One of the unusual things about Chalets Direct is that the people who started it didn’t simply disappear once the business was established.

The two founding members have remained involved in the company.

And they are still skiers.

That matters because Chalets Direct has never been run purely as a technology project or an accommodation database.

The mountains are still part of the reason we’re doing it.

There is something about skiing that is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.

The alarm going off before sunrise.

The first glimpse of fresh snow.

The click of the bindings.

That first lift ride.

Stepping off onto a mountain with the whole day ahead of you.

And then, at the end of the day, walking back into a village with tired legs and that slightly ridiculous feeling that you’ve just had one of the best days of the year.

That is the holiday we’re ultimately trying to help people find.

The internet changed. Chalets Direct changed with it.

The website that exists today would be almost unrecognisable compared with the one we launched in 1999.

And that’s probably a good thing.

We’ve lived through the first dot-com boom and bust, the financial crisis, major changes in the travel industry, the rise of smartphones, social media, Brexit, Covid and the enormous shift towards online booking and comparison.

We’ve watched huge travel businesses appear, grow and consolidate.

We’ve seen the internet move from being an exciting new opportunity to something people now take completely for granted.

And we’ve had to keep adapting.

There have been periods when the economic outlook was difficult.

There have been difficult seasons.

There have been moments when the way people booked ski holidays seemed to be changing faster than anyone could keep up with.

And there have been plenty of occasions when the easy option would have been to simply do what everyone else was doing.

But we’ve never wanted Chalets Direct to become just another big booking platform.

The technology has changed.

The underlying idea hasn’t.

The people behind the properties

We also made a conscious decision about how we think about the people who list their accommodation with us.

We call them members.

That’s not just a different word for advertisers.

Many are people who have spent years in their resort. Some own their properties. Some run chalet businesses. Some have built their livelihoods around looking after visitors in the mountains.

They know their resorts in a way that isn’t always possible to capture in a database.

They know which part of the mountain gets the morning sun.

Which lift is best when the queues build up.

Where the best family lunch might be.

Which transfer company actually turns up when it says it will.

Which part of the resort is lively – and which part is quiet.

Those relationships have become one of the most valuable parts of Chalets Direct.

Many of our members have been with us for years, some for a very long time. Our current advertiser base still includes businesses that have been with us for a decade or more.

That continuity is something we’re proud of. Here’s just some of our fantastic members – and there’s more featured in our previous blog about what makes a ski holiday truly memorable.

The Solutions Room: A Different Way to Find a Ski Holiday

One of the best examples of how Chalets Direct has evolved is the Solutions Room.

It was actually created very early in the company’s history, in autumn 1999.

The idea was simple but unusual: instead of making holidaymakers search through accommodation themselves, let them describe what they were looking for.

Then let the people who might be able to help respond.

The concept has stayed with us for more than two decades and has grown into one of the most distinctive parts of Chalets Direct.

Today, someone can tell us where they’d like to go, their dates, how many people are travelling, the sort of accommodation they want, how close they’d like to be to the airport and other preferences.

But they can also explain it in their own words.

That last part is important.

A ski holiday isn’t always a neat collection of filters.

Someone might say:

“We’re two families with children, we’d love somewhere fairly quiet but within easy reach of the slopes, we’d prefer catered but are open to self-catered, and we’d really like somewhere with a great view.”

That tells you far more about the holiday they’re imagining than a series of tick boxes.

Over the years, the Solutions Room has accumulated tens of thousands of real holiday requests and an extraordinary number of responses from accommodation providers.

In other words, it has become a record of what real skiers have actually wanted from their holidays.

What we’ve learned from skiers

After more than 25 years, we’ve learned that people don’t necessarily want the same thing from a ski holiday.

A family with young children may care about completely different things from a group of experienced skiers.

A couple looking for a romantic weekend isn’t necessarily interested in the same accommodation as a group of twelve friends.

Some people want luxury.

Some want value.

Some want ski-in/ski-out.

Some care much more about the village, restaurants and atmosphere.

Some want a traditional catered chalet.

Others would rather have an apartment and do their own thing.

And increasingly, people don’t necessarily want a traditional seven-night Saturday-to-Saturday holiday either.

The challenge for us is to help people navigate all of those possibilities without making the process more complicated than it needs to be.

Why direct still matters

Travel has become incredibly efficient.

You can compare hundreds of properties in seconds.

You can read reviews from people you’ve never met.

You can see photographs, prices, maps and availability without speaking to anyone.

That’s fantastic.

But sometimes the most useful information still comes from a person.

If you’re spending thousands of pounds on a ski holiday, you may want to ask:

“Is this really suitable for six adults?”

“How easy is it to get to the lift?”

“Is the walk manageable in ski boots?”

“Would you recommend this part of the resort for children?”

“What happens if we need an airport transfer?”

Those conversations can matter.

That’s why we still believe in connecting holidaymakers directly with the people behind the accommodation.

More than just chalets

The name has stayed the same, but ski holidays have changed.

Chalets remain a huge part of what we do, but today people can also find apartments, hotels, luxury properties and different types of catered and self-catered accommodation through Chalets Direct.

That’s important because we’re not really in the business of selling one particular type of holiday.

We’re in the business of helping people find the right holiday for them.

Sometimes that’s a traditional catered chalet.

Sometimes it’s a self-catered apartment.

Sometimes it’s a luxury property with a hot tub and a private driver.

Sometimes it’s simply a good-value place in the right resort.

And sometimes the best option is something the holidaymaker hadn’t even considered when they started looking.

A ski business that has kept evolving

There’s a temptation, after 25 years, to look backwards and say:

“We’ve been doing this since 1999, so we must have got everything right.”

We haven’t.

We’ve made mistakes.

We’ve had to change things that didn’t work.

We’ve had technology that eventually became obsolete.

We’ve had to rethink how people search, how properties are presented and how holidaymakers communicate with members.

And we’re still doing that today.

The current Chalets Direct site is part of that process.

The aim isn’t simply to make an old website look newer.

It’s to take what we’ve learned over more than two decades and build something that works better for today’s skiers while retaining the things that made the original idea worthwhile.

Faster search.

Better mobile experiences.

More useful information.

More ways to find accommodation.

Better ways to connect holidaymakers with members.

And, importantly, continuing to develop the Solutions Room rather than losing the human element behind it.

Why we’re still here

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Chalets Direct isn’t that it has been around since 1999.

It’s that it has continued to adapt while remaining recognisably the same business.

The internet around us has changed almost beyond recognition.

The travel industry has changed.

The economy has changed.

The way people research and book holidays has changed.

The competitive landscape has changed.

But the reason we started hasn’t really changed at all.

We still think a great ski holiday starts with finding the right people, the right place and the right accommodation.

And we still think the person providing the holiday should be able to talk directly to the person taking it.

And we’re still skiers

This is probably the most important part.

Chalets Direct isn’t run by people who discovered skiing because they happened to work in travel.

Skiing is part of who we are.

We still spend time in the mountains.

We still get excited when the forecast shows snow.

We still have strong opinions about resorts, lifts, mountain restaurants, skis and where to go when the weather changes.

And we still know that feeling when you wake up, look outside and realise you’ve got a perfect day ahead of you.

That’s why, after more than 25 years, we still care about getting this right.

Because we’re not simply helping someone book a room.

We’re helping them get to the mountains.

What’s next?

We don’t know exactly what the next 25 years will look like.

And that’s probably a good thing.

The ski industry will change again.

Technology will change again.

The way people discover and book holidays will change again.

Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly change parts of the travel industry that we haven’t even thought about yet.

We’ll have to adapt again.

But there are some things we’d like to keep.

The independence.

The direct relationship.

The knowledge of the mountains.

The people behind the properties.

The Solutions Room.

And the simple belief that a ski holiday should feel like something exciting you’re looking forward to, rather than just another transaction on a screen.

That’s the idea that started on a ski trip to Chamonix in 1999.

It’s the idea that has carried Chalets Direct through more than 25 years of change.

And it’s still the idea we’re building around today.

Chalets Direct. Ski holidays direct from the people who know the mountains.