Ski Total - what are they like?

A snowHead

Any opinions about Ski Total as a tour operator?

A snowHead

AFAIK they are the sister company of Esprit, so same type of holidays but without all the childcare. I would expect them to be very good. We recently stayed in Esprit's Annahof in Saas Fee and the staff there who were absolutely excellent are going to be in Total's Ambassador across the road this season. They seem to have a very good choice of properties across a decent range of resorts. I have been looking at them too.

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very good in selva this year. excellent staff, good food and quality chalet (4*)

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Was on a course a while ago and stayed in one of their chalets - was really good.

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we've been with them as a group three times now. I have always rated them though we did have some complaints about the chalet this year (crowded and no room to move your elbows at the dining table). I would happily book with them again and I notice a lot of their prices are cheaper than last year at the moment

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Thanks. Think I might book with them.

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OK, but a not as good as they think they are imo. Lovely high end chalet in Tignes, very well finished - but let down badly by silly things like refusing to replace the glasses as it was late in the season, so you couldn't all have wine & water at the same time and nothing matched Wink

No bins in rooms, no chairs in rooms, unable to manage a mid-week towel change of the frankly pathetic towels, one cafetiere between two chalets, no mirror anywhere in the chalet...all really minor, and I'd got the place half price so couldn't care less, but if I'd paid the close to 1k they were asking I'd have been annoyed, it really wasn't 'luxury' in service terms at all. Our chalet guy was fine verging on good, the one downstairs was clearly terrible, regularly having to run upstairs and 'borrow' our guy to help them with a catastrophe with the dinner etc - we heard the guys downstairs complaining the food was terrible and I wasn't suprised.

I would use them again, but only in one of their cheaper places, as on my (admittedly single) experience I think other places do better from high mid end up and it felt to me like it was the company (resort manager maybe) flawed rather than unlucky with the individual staff.

aj xx

After all it is free

I book a group every year and will be using them for the fifth time this season. My priority is price and location (ski in, ski out and a large domain) so am not too worried about odd shortcomings. The food has been excellent on every occasion and I would agree with a.j. to choose a lower budget accommodation and you will not be disappointed with the value. Their ridiculous invoicing system nearly drove me nuts last year with multiple pages with a few individuals per page with supplements etc. which meant I had to manually add them all up. There were 30 of us but this year I have received one invoice so am much happier.

Been with them a couple of times - one was better than the other but both were reasonable.

Was slightly irked at the ski esprit thing - we'd got to the airport and were about to check in when the ski esprit busses arrived late. Because they've got kids they all went to the front of the queue so they didn't have to wait too long. So I had an extra hour standing in a cramped queue at innsbruck. I wouldn't have minded if I'd signed up to a Ski Esprit holiday and all that that entails but I hadn't - I'd signed up to Ski Total.

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a.j., if you want high-end luxury you are better to look for a smaller specialist (eg Scott Dunn, Powder Byrne). The bigger operators rarely do it well or offer value for the extra cash in my opinion.

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In March 2013 we booked a holiday via Iglu Ski at Chalet Isba in Meribel, ultimately run by Ski Total. We were recommended this 5 diamond chalet by our Iglu advisor, however were very disappointed by the chalet, the food and the service throughout the week. We have stayed in similar chalets every year for quite a number of years, and this was the most disappointing chalet we've ever stayed in. Based on the Ski Total website, we had expectations of 5 star food and service. However, the chalet description did not match up with reality:

- Food was very average, coffee cold, and extras were pitiful.
- £35 to accommodate allergy, but got children's cereal and ate worse than regular guest meals.
- Room with "balcony" didn't mention the balcony was shared by all guests, so curtains closed at all times. Worse than not having a balcony.
- Chalet staff lukewarm, no menus, no honor bar, no extra towels for jacuzzi, many little things added up.

All of these things mentioned would have been acceptable if the chalet was marketing appropriately and priced accordingly. We were sold a five-diamond experience, and got significantly less. We got an official response from Ski Total, and it was just shy of a template response. Don't be fooled, this is not a 5 diamond chalet.

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Apologies for the thread hijack..... so who are the fairly top end operators? Not the Scott Dunn types, but the level below that.

foxtrotzulu, try VIP Ski.

You know it makes sense.

For Meribel ski cuisine are good. Consensio are worth a look for a broader selection in other resorts. Because many excellent operators are resort specific it is worth choosing the resort and then asking for recommendations IMO

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

chrisJersey, Consensio is hardly a level below Scott Dunn.

A snowHead

foxtrotzulu, You could try snowcrazy, they have expanded since we last used them a few years ago in la rosiere, but then it was very good.

www.snowcrazy.co.uk

A snowHead

foxtrotzulu, take a look at supertravel not scott dunn money but very good.

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Thanks everyone!

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some of my friends did a 'season' with them.... They quit after 2 weeks because their chalet oven broke and ski total didn't want to change it!! plus there was only 2 minibuses for 12 chalets!!!

this was a few years ago, and just their experience. some people may have had a good experience, but on the flip side some may not have...

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Ski Total are OK better than some worse than others

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Just looked at Ski total for a boys trip to Ischgl at end of Jan It looks quite good but why is there a supplement for a bathroom?

There is a room price and a supplement per person per night for either shower/wc/balcony or bath/wc/balcony. However looking at the chalet room details there are no alternative bathroom arrangmeents for which there's no supplement. I'm confused?

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halfhand, maybe it's like the supplements for snow tyres in Geneva, even though by law all cars need to have snow tyres?

After all it is free

halfhand, it's how they keep the headline brochure price down without affecting the final price margin wink

So I can stay in a comfortable chalet in Austria where not only do I have to share a double bed with another bloke but they charge me to have a wash and a crap Shocked

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Yeah, but if you're really lucky you'll get one of those nice Austrian loos that allow you to examine your crap prior to disposal Laughing

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chrisJersey, bloody hell just looked at the Consensio website- never heard of them before- not really surprised as prices are per chalet with a typical price for a chalet of 10 at Christmas / helf term being about £20-30,000 - excluding flights etc.

Not really the same as Esprit where almost everyone in in Courchevel 1850 at Feb half term 2013 actualy paid the princely sum of - £750!

and were very happy.....

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ed123, how / where did they manage to get that sort of price? I was watching there last minute prices on their website and didnt see anything like that come up? Did I just miss them?

profuse apologies (i know consensio but was not actually or should not have been thinking of them when i posted above). I meant chaletpro as being a good reference site - in my defence it does end in "o". To give a proper reply to the post hijacker I still think we need to know which resort they want to go to as there are, IMHO, so many high quality but single resort operators.

as for consensio they took over a lot of chalets from a very top end chalet operator which ceased operating - forget the name and wont guess in case i get it wrong!

You know it makes sense.

It all depends what resort you are in!

Always found Ski Total to be a very solid company, Espirit (their sister company) have a 5* reputation.

Depending on where you are looking at going, If you are looking for something a little more up market, VIP are extremely good, great food as are Alpine Club, although they are limited to a single resort.

Don't be put off by previous comments however, Ski Total offer a great range of chalets and hotels, which are usually very well received by most of our clients.

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

We were in a Ski Total chalet in Lech last Dec.

Excellent value for money - enormous rooms, great pool - the brochure did not do it justice. Food varied between very good to OK ( for kids' meals ) . Service at breakfast was sometimes chaotic - running out or slow on producing simple things like boiled eggs.

But - this was the 2nd week of their season and I think overall it was very good . Staff good and friendly and we all enjoyed ourselves. Afternoon tea had soup as well as the usual cakes which was great.

Efficient transfers, good ski guiding with a great day out to Sonnenkopf. We will go with them again.

A snowHead

I would call them as absolute middle of the road. Some stuff better than others - only after we realised the carnage between resort and airports did we realise that they'd done a good job of getting us down the mountain, albeit several hours late, finding an alternative flight home, from a different airport, and then eventually (admittedly after a huge amount of kicking off) got us back to our home airport before the end of the day. Others travelling with smaller operators ended up sleeping in the airport that night.

So they are big enough to cope with even fairly major issues. We stayed with them first week of the season and they did a perfectly ok job of it. We are an understanding group, and as long as there is a lot of food we are happy. We were all perfectly happy with rooms, attitude and enthusiasm of staff (but it was week 1!) and management ability to cater for our group.

Other stuff not so great - their guys managing things in the UK made some fairly bad decisions while we were trying to get home, and a couple of meals were entirely ok but nothing special (just stuff like rice that was a bit undercooked) but almost all good and coped with vegetarians and picky eaters easily enough.

We stayed in Val Thorens, I would happily use them again. I consider them to be equal to the likes of Ski Olympic, but cheaper, and roughly the same as Crystal etc. This was all helped by the price we paid, which was so bonkers cheap there was nothing we could complain about really. If you didn't like dinner it still would have been a bargain if we had gone out a couple of nights and eaten like a king.

A snowHead

paulthesnowfinder, I take it you're a Ski Total Director!!

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

Ah, chalet Janus, where in some other snowheads thread, wink

it was reported by a complainant that "the other chalet guests included a JP, a Senior Partner in Law Firm, 2 Army Officers, and a couple of Public Sector Senior Managers." Yep, that sounded like an effin' horrible recipe to me too, but Total can hardly be blamed for that.

Never had a problem with Total myself though Little Angel

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ha ha! I wish I was on his/her money!

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Having seen what goes on "behind the scenes" I would say it is pot luck. If the staff is good and conscientious despite being overworked and underpaid then you can have a nice time. Just expect that if something goes wrong then it usually takes a lot longer to get it sorted than with a small company. Rep has to call resort manager, resort manager calls the area manager, area manager calls the country manager, etc... Same as with Crystal, Neilson, Inghams (now same management as for Esprit and Total) etc really.

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chrisJersey, I think you mean Descent? Took me ages to think of their name...

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

We stayed in Ski Total's Chalet Elfie in St Anton for New Year in I think 2007/2008. The food and service were so bad it wasn't until this year that we finally plucked up the courage to try another catered chalet. We got it cheap and had a good enough holiday but the standards were way below anything you'd ever get in an Austrian Hotel. Our chalet experience this year was great and I think it's because this time we used a specialist operator that only had accommodation in one town.

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ansta1, Valkyrie,

The brochure price was lots more than £750 for Feb half term. I got that price by waiting and watching!

Chalets as opposed to Chalet Hotels are very very variable when it comes to the standard of food. Neither is the same as going to a locally owned and run 3-4 star hotel but the prices should be much lower as well.

YPYMATYC. The main problem is that £1k doesn't seem to go that far...dangly bits. rolling eyes

Help!!

Ski Total - what are they like?

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