The golden age of the Brit skiing holiday..?

A snowHead

A lot of us mourn the passing of the "cheap and cheerful" chalets which offered inexperienced and unqualified young Brits a lifestyle they could only dream of in normal circumstances. How many of them could have earned enough in any other way to keep a roof over their head, eat (and drink.......) and do a lot of skiing.

A snowHead

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I have dedected a change in what people want from ski holiday accommodation, mainly from reading this forum. People now seem to want single rooms, individual bathrooms and even hot water for showers. The basic chalets I used to frequent 30+ yers ago offered non of these. It was 3 or 4 to a room, a couple rooms to a bathroom (other toilets were available), a hot shower for the first 3 or 4 people and chalet staff who may or may not turn up for breakfast. We didn't care we were having a good time.

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Now this thread has turned into a “do you remember with rose tinted glasses” two things spring to mind as great memories , going over to David Vine on Grandstand in Val de Isere early Dec to explain that the downhill was off because of a massive snowstorm leaving you safe in the knowledge that there will be snow for your NY trip and reps lying at the airport about the ski conditions when questioned before the the internet age . Great Days .

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@Le Grand Renard,

After all it is free

@phil_w, but as we all well kno', you are not "typical" ... are you? wink

I will however confess that having done 3 chalet seasons and owned a company for one of them, I'm not entirely sure (in retrospect) what the appeal really was. Not that cheap, having to share a dining table with strangers who might not be that fun. Chalet girl cooking.

I mean, for me, very clear appeals. 6 days skiing a week. Chalet girl cooking. Wine. Etc. But for our clients?

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for me the golden years of skiing, were from the start of the 90's, when i first went skiing (was supposed to go in 1988, but mate i was going with had a serious ski injury on an earlier trip, so ours was cancelled) until the end of the 90's, after completing several ski holidays and a few ski seasons for a T/O

with regards to the decline of chalet holidays, i wonder how many contributors on this forum have been on a chalet holiday in the last 10 or 15 years?

i know the last one i went on was in 2002, and that was after i had worked a few seasons for a chalet operator a couple of years before that, and that was only because one of my mates who was a seasonaire with me, had arranged it with his friends who ran a chalet company, so we got a bit of a discount.

i had only been on one other chalet holiday previous to that, that was in Tignes with Skiworld in the early 90's.

personally, i believe that the demise of chalet holidays are because of the choices that the internet, along with the rise of low cost airlines, have given.
This have given skiers a greater access to resorts, transfers, accommodation, equipment hire etc, that you could not get with traditional tour operators.
leading to more and more people going on DIY winter holidays

"It was a combination of factors:
French employment legislation - working time directive, employer costs, inability to offset food, accommodation and lift pass against wages, etc, etc. This really bumped up the costs to the chalet operators significantly.
Brexit - making it much harder for non-EU passport holders to work, so fewer available workers, and higher costs again
Covid - huge loss of income put a number of specialist operators out of business"

also, along with examples above, i would have said that the barriers introduced by authorities for tour operators to offer "ski companions" to guests, contributed to the demise of the more affordable chalet, as this was part of the business model.

i cannot speak for other chalet operators, but i used to take an interest at the start of each season, to see how the company i worked for, silverski, were doing.
i used to notice them reducing their offering year on year, to the point that they had completely withdrawn from Meribel, where they first started. they had also left various other resorts, to the point they were only operating from a couple of resorts.
sadly, covid did seem to be the final nail in the coffin for them!

but, i am sure there will always be a demand for the higher end chalets, with cash rich/time poor clientele

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Digressing, but picking up on recent posts above, did anyone encounter reps or ski companions (who held no instructor qualifications) who offered technical advice on skiing technique? Requested or unwelcome.

We did on a Freshtracks holiday in Val D’Isere circa 2010. The rep in question was a reasonable skier, but so were all the punters. It went down like the proverbial lead balloon. The other reps were fun.

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@Snow&skifan, I would provide limited critique if requested.

Also fashion advice.

@Snow&skifan, not quite, but I do remember skiing with a ‘guide’ (from I think Ski Enterprise) who went by the NDP of Bird - he came from Doncaster. This was the mid-90s and we were on a day out in ADH from L2A. He took us to a red run, which was a little chopped up, but perfectly skiable. He turned to myself and the first Mrs SL and said he didn’t fancy the look of the run how about us? We looked at each other in astonishment. He ended up gingerly following us down.

You know it makes sense.

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

I think now is the golden age of skiing. Resorts are better connected with newer lift systems, they have a lot more snowmaking capacity, hotels have got better with nicer rooms and more ameneties, modern ski equipment makes it easier to learn than the long thin skis we used to use, and everything can be booked on the internet, no need to get ripped off by tour operators trying to flog you rubbish ski hire on the bus. What's not to like ? Everything is better now than it was when I first skied 30+ years ago.

A snowHead

A snowHead

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@JohnS4, not having a go btw - thread drift is normal lol

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Just on the "becoming the preserve of the wealthy" point....

I think you've only got to look at what happens whenever a new development is built in a resort or an old one is refurbed these days. It's very, very unusual for people to be building new mid-range offerings. Everything that's getting built now is glitzier & more expensive (often A LOT more expensive) than what was there before. That, to me, tells you it's only going one way. The market for the richer customer (particularly in high altitude, snow sure resorts) is growing significantly.

Brits won't be benefiting that much from that as we, as a nation, are gradually getting relatively poorer and the gaps are becoming more extreme between the haves & have nots. The typical middle class, home-owning, decent job generation that did well out of the Thatcher years when skiing started booming will become much less over the next 10 years. Unless you've a bank of mum & dad to help you out, the 30-35 year olds starting to have kids won't be taking them on skiing holidays when they're 40-45 as they'll be relatively crippled by two jobs, mortgages (if they're lucky) and childcare costs that previous generations didn't have to anywhere near the same degree.

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@paulhinch, but the French and German economies aren't in great shape - and the Russian market largely gone. So where are all these richer customers?

After all it is free

I did chalet holidays in the 90's. There was definitely an appeal to it and it was generally fun - and that's not nostalgia talking.

For a start at the time the internet was in it's infancy and nobody had smart phones. So a one stop shop was handy.

And the concept meant you just get a few mates together and book up without too much hassle. No need to think about who was going to cook/clean.

And it didn't cost the earth.

The standard of accommodation, food, free wine was a bit hit and miss - as was the other punters in the chalet. But at the same time there was some fun banter.

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It's astonishing how quickly the "normal" can change.

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Had to share an office with smokers!

Over a certain age we probably all did. And deal with shiny toilet paper.

You know it makes sense.

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

Adding to the (long) list of reasons most chalet-holidays have gone away:

- Pre internet the operators had a captive clientele and sold a package; they made a commission on flights, insurance, ski-hire, transfers, ski-school, entertainment, even the group meal-out on chalet girls night off. This all subsidised the basic bed&board ticket price. All these things now have transparent pricing, and are bought direct from the supplier. (Not that the clients were being scalped, the commissions were paid out of the suppliers profits - but now they get to keep the lot!).
- Food-safety and hygiene (over)regulations.
- Airbnb.
- Protectionism.

Golden age for Brits? Let's say when the most people (including school-groups), got the best value for money, and had the most fun? Has to be the eighties and nineties. snowHead

A snowHead

Really not sure the Chalet TOs made a commission on the flights and transfers. They often had to charter the flight themselves, and charter the coaches for the transfers.
They certainly earned on the other aspects, but then were saving the suppliers work - eg sorting out 150 lift passes in one hit rather than say 75 individual transactions.
Package holidays are still popular for many people, though a lot more people are happy and comfortable sorting things out independently now, but equally have been forced into doing so with the demise of the specialist operators.

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Plenty of mum & dad banks that aren't funding private school fees but are paying for their 25 year old kid's rent etc.

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Cars are the problem in regard to financing this skiing stuff. I drive old bangers (and fix them myself) and can afford 3 to 4 one week trips to various favourite places each year. My golden age of skiing has been and still is 1980 to now. Everyone I know who can't afford to come skiing has one or two 60k-80k cars on their driveway Laughing

Eejits.

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My point was you can't fill a big ski resort purely with the wealthiest, which is a small percentage of society.

Or can you....?

After all it is free

Agree wealth distribution is an issue:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/03/george-osborne-wealth-tax-labour-inheritocracy-work-keir-starmer-rachel-reeves

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When the iron curtain came down, we started to see parties of Eastern Europeans arriving in Weatern European resorts. Initially you would see 6 people huddled around one plate of chips swigging Coke out of their back pack. This quickly changed as their middle classes developed and became more affluent. Then folk started to come in from other developing economies: Brazil, Türkiye, South Africa, China. There may not be huge numbers in ski resorts, but the 1% richest folk in every country still amounts to a very big number.

So places are much more cosmopolitan than they used to be although still pretty white. Are we saying that the golden age of skiing was when we had the Alpes to ourselves?

Help!!

The golden age of the Brit skiing holiday..?

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