Is skiing getting too expensive?

A snowHead

Yesterday two of us set out for a day's skiing. 200km round trip. 40km on mountain road. 15 liters of petrol at 2 euros per litre: 30 euros
Lift passes for 2: 30 euros - oh yes, we were not in a big ski resort, somewhere like Courchevel would have cost us closer to 120 euros.
Tolls: 20 euros

80 euros in total

Economist Jean-Marc Jancovici “tourism will suffer, not from a lack of snow but from a general contraction in purchasing power linked to the cost of oil”.

With Petrol over 1.90 even in French supermarkets I wonder whether we are reaching the point where skiing, or generally travelling except maybe a summer holiday, is getting too expensive.

A snowHead

@davidof, It's not just the dramatically increased costs, but the squeeze on incomes. When I still had a "real" job we had three or four ski holidays each winter, then when I was made redundant we worked winter seasons, now we are not doing that (Brexit and Covid), looking at ski holidays it all looks astonishingly expensive - hence why we are in Scotland for ten days braving the drizzle!

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@davidof, you can't take it with you.......

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I guess it's an age thing. When I was a kid skiing was a rich person's sport. Aeroplanes were things rich people used to get about: those and skiing weren't for the likes of us.

So no, I think it's way too cheap, which is why you have crowds and all that stuff which people complain about here. I wonder if the same people complain about the crowds as complain about the cost, or are they two different groups united only in that they like complaining?

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Honestly I think it's cheaper in real terms than it was when I started skiing nearly 30 years ago. As I recall the cheapest of packages from the UK started from around gbp500, which is equivalent to about a grand now. Pretty sure you can do it for a lot cheaper than that these days.

In the same period petrol prices have gone up, yes, but only by around 20% in real terms, while other travel costs, notably flying, have got a lot lower in that time.

Most other things that I can think of like equipment and clothing have, in my memory at least, remained pretty constant in real terms as well, so no, I don't think it's _becoming_ too expensive. Either it always was or it still is not, IYSWIM.

Edit: of course for UK folk the exchange rate and Brexit have exaggerated costs, but that's not so much an increase in costs as a relative decrease in earning power, and you have to look inwards to see the causes of that...

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In answer to the question.....yes. However I look at where I'm happy to compromise and that tends to keep costs the same each year.

For example - we hardly ever eat out at lunchtimes. Maybe snacks instead. But then we do go out to eat a couple of nights a week (first and last night is the tradition as I drive,!). And I'm really happy to cook at night - it's very straightforward/quick and a la Keith Floyd!!!!

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Forgot to say - we HAVE to go in school hols. Either Feb or April. And we drive.

After all it is free

Crikey, I thought we were taxed high enough - but the French supermarket price for petrol is higher than at my local supermarket.

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No - high prices keep the riff-raff out snowHead

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best part of 2 years with lost income was always going to push prices up. This was then followed by record inflation across Western Europe.
Service sector have to keep the lights on! Not sure what kind of financial support businesses get or if there are any caps similar to residential.

I cant see prices coming down though. Once people are used to paying the current price for things, it will be the norm.

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Well it's a naturally expensive hobby, just due to the number of factors. Lift passes often being the biggest outlay. That and taking the freeloading kids along. It would be significantly cheaper if we could ditch them Twisted Evil

In seriousness though, I agree with @kettonskimum, it's about finding your priorities and adjusting accordingly. We want to be very close to the lift, in a minimum of a 2 bed apartment, in school holidays, and we put the kids into ski school. Everything else can be adjusted. We cook most evenings and found it preferable to either have lunch in the apartment, or take a baguette out to eat, and just buy drinks and snacks at lunchtime. When we've flown, we've used public transport rather than pay £££ for transfers, and are going to drive next time; even though fuel is expensive, it's still cheaper for 4 of us to go in one car than it is to fly.

I think it's the days skiing that costs more than going for a week. I looked at the day vs week cost of where we went over Christmas, and the week pass was good value in comparison. We found a similar pattern when looking at our local dry slope. £25 per person for a day pass to the dry slope, including equipment hire. And there's 4 of us. Or £850 for a family annual pass that would allow unlimited visits. Of course, then fuel went up 6 months into our membership and it cost us about £20 for a return trip in fuel, so it wasn't economically viable to renew it.

You know it makes sense.

I am doing more touring/winter climbing now in Scotland, no lift pass required. Not a fan of piste skiing.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I am doing more touring/winter climbing now in Scotland, no lift pass required. Not a fan of piste skiing, but unfortunately lift pass usually required abroad.

A snowHead

The answer is no.

40 EUR for a day's skiing including transport is not expensive, by any measure.

By comparison, one hour at Hemel will cost you £40 before any fuel costs!

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Roughly priced up a month in Banff starting early march and is about £2k all in. Less than £70 per day including accomodation seems very reasonable. Granted not everyone has that kind of flexibility or willingness to stay in a hostel. But there are certainly more affordable options.

For anyone that is happy just touring I'm trying to get a deal sorted for a nice lodge in Kyrgyzstan to offer breakfast, dinner, and accomodation for around £15-20 per day. Flights were around £500 last time I looked so as little as £700 for two weeks in a catered lodge with fantastic back country skiing straight from the door. (For anyone interested for 2024 feel free to drop me a pm).

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@davidof, didn't stanton cover this already Laughing

Answer: it depends.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

For some strange reason, i always break any activity I do down to the cost per hour.
Your day cost you 80 euros but how long did that day last, remember the car journey and the chat is all part of your day.
If it’s less than 10 euros per hour, it’s a bargain, if it’s less than 20 it’s still good value.
Compared to what you get paid per hour.

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After all it is free

The issue is the travel cost here not the skiing cost. So I suppose the change to an electric vehicle or public transport will solve the majority of that problem. Of course the up front cost for an electric vehicle is damn expensive compared to a bus pass.

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Costs me so little it's laughable. I wish the ski areas here would put the price up and do some investing in more lifts.

In English money, I have two season passes, a big commercial area 300 GBP and a club field 150 GBP. I rack up about 50-60 days on those - so the cost per day for me to get lift accessed is about the same as a decent coffee. Day passes at a few other places maybe 40 GBP a go, and I'll do a few of those in a season, but usually manage to find a 2 4 1 deal or decent discount mid week.

Gas to get to most areas is about 25 GBP a day return for half a tank. Flannel shirts are cheap, so the outerwear bill is minimal too Very Happy

Usually find some creative dirtbag way to get cheap deals on equipment out of season, so that doesn't cost too much.

The helicopter bill is right up there however - too scared to even add that one up Very Happy

Now that overseas travel is happening, I've had a rude awakening to overseas costs. Especially insurance. That's scary.

Any kind of rescue/medical cost is government funded here, so never need to worry about the financial impact of doing something heroic.

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For relative newcomers its definitely never going to be a cheap holiday (IMO)

Can't comment on the exact costs yet but for a family of five (kids 8-14 yo) we have booked for February and doing DIY.

So far i reckon about €3500 for a week (Feb 18-25) in the Mondole Ski area south of Turin.

Selected this area for a number of reasons - relative beginners so big area not needed, lower cost lift passes, 2 bed apt available quite cheap vs 1 bed in a lot of other areas. Small town/village in case wife doesn't want to ski a lot, close to Turin airport which had reasonable flight prices from dublin.

Flights €700 dublin to turin return including 2 suitcases with ryanair. It will be €90 extra if i bring my own board.
Accommodation - 2 bed apartment in Frabosa Soprano - €650 for the week.
Car rental - €75 for a medium sized car (jeep renegade or similar) booked through ryanair. Note - i had a previous booking for fiat tipo estate at €300 which i was happy with but checked back a few weeks later and got the above deal. Cancelled first booking and money back in CC a week later.
Ski school looks like it will be €120 each for the kids so €360. (that's 5 days of 2 hours per day). I might get a private lesson or two but don't have to get sliding. Wife may not ski at all, or may do a few lessons, so can't be sure on that. I guess a week of school for her will be an additional €120.
Ski rental looks to be around 75-100 * 4 so I'll say €400.
Ski passes will be between €750 and €1000 for the five of us depending on whether we get 5 or 6 day passes. Again, wife may decide not to ski much and only get day passes as needed.
Self catering so food will be cheap enough.

I can't see how we could do it much cheaper to be honest. Driving is not really an option from Ireland and even if it was the costs would far outweigh the flight costs. I guess to improve overall VFM you could go for two weeks and reduce the cost per day that way? We could knock a few quid off with a one bed or studio apartment too, but figure we are already at bargain basement level for the accommodation anyway. Hopefully in a few years the kids will be able to skip ski school and maybe cut some spend out that way? But that will be offset by higher flight and lift passes as they get older.

Overall, I'm more than happy with the costs as I love the mountains and am delighted to get the kids started out.

We may not have the cash to go every year but will go when we can.

@oink, Good write up but the stand out in all of that is 75 Euro for a Jeep for a week?, are you sure that is not per day rate, that is a complete bargin.............

You know it makes sense.

Certainly beginning to feel expensive. Was not that long ago when the lift pass crossed the 300 euro barrier for the week. Certainly in the time period where I've been doing bashes. And this year is dangerously close to the 400 euro arbitrary psychological threshold for the week. 30% inflation in "not very many years". Next year, it will cross that threshold.

Maybe it seems more expensive than it should cos I've missed 2 years?

Ditto for the prices of beer and lunch that I've seen quoted.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

I've booked a ski weekend for the end of Feb that is more expensive than a weeks trip that I organized in 2015.
Now it isn't 100% like for like in terms of exact same accommodation etc, but flights, transfers, ski area, are all the same, accommodation choice very similar.
I know there are better rates for weeks, instead of weekends, but without doubt I do feel that skiing as a holiday is much more expensive than it was.
Comparable summer holidays have not risen in cost to the same extent.

A snowHead

Going in school holidays seems to have attracted a price premium in recent years, over and above what it traditionally did. For example, my recollection from 25 years ago is that while air fares were higher in school holidays, the premium wasn't anything like it is now. Going back to that time, my recollection is that car hire was around as expensive as it is now, adjusted for inflation but that in the decade before Covid, it became relatively much cheaper.

Subjectively, I'm inclined to think that the UK has fallen behind over the last decade in terms of wages keeping up with inflation and costs, compared to the other major economies, and still hasn't recovered from the impact of Covid in the way that all the others have as well. And that this is bound to make the cost of a ski holiday relatively higher now than it was, say a decade ago. And so yes, for a segment of the market, this will inevitably make a ski holiday unaffordable now, when it was just about viable previously.

If I was a journo on a deadline to do this as a TV feature or web article, I'd probably try and find a 'typical' family of 4 in a 3-bed terrace/semi who just about managed to afford to go on a ski trip every year. Then prompt them in the usual way to echo my script that now they're having to budget +£2K for energy bills and +£1K for grocery increases, and +£500 for petrol, this has meant them cancelling their holiday this year. If I was lazy, I'd leave it at that after saying a sentence that included ".. Brexit ..", ".. Ukraine ..", ".. 2008 financial crisis .." and " .. the recent Mini-Budget ..". If I was a proper journalist, I'd try and analyse just how much f the extra cost was down to each factor, although I doubt it would be worth the effort.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@davidof, lives in France right so this is not a UK thing Puzzled

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After all it is free

Yes it cn be expensive and it can also be cheap. For example, a couple I was teaching yesterday boiught skis and boots in their local charity shop. Handy that they live in Aviemore. About £80 for really nice skis and boots and £25 for a setup in a local ski shop. They bought stuff from decathlon. So the cost of the kit needn't be expensive.

Fortunately the boots were good with a reheat.

The cost for a ski holiday compared to my recent malaga trip. Flights to VCE for the BB were £130 cheaper at normal rates (by normal I mean I used AVIOS for the BB) than my recent week in Malaga.

Accommodation in Malaga was £250 cheaper than BB for two but food is included in the BB so the same. It was more expensive in Malaga if I wanted to go alone. So a solo ski holiday is cheaper. Granted I have to pay a ski pass so for the BB + Solo + ski pass it is the same as the apartment in Malaga.

Transfers in Malaga was £20 cheaper.

So compared to a nice AirBnB in Malaga the ski holiday was about the same as a week in Malaga using Jet2 one way and Tui the other way. Just going with Jet2 return or Tui return was more expensive. The holiday in Malaga was off season and not during a school holifday.

Yes I agree, skiing can definitely be done with comparable budget to a non-skiing holiday if you put your mind to it and not just go with packages.

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I don't deny that things are getting more expensive but for the last 10yrs or so our weekly ski trip has come out at around £1000 - £1100 all in (flights, transfers, accommodation, ski hire, passes, food and drink).

Re: summer holidays, there's a piece in yesterday's ST on getting value for money and a graphic showing how price inflation has occurred compared to 2019.

Help!!

Is skiing getting too expensive?

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