 Poster: A snowHead
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Hi All
I am used to making travel arrangements for some weird and wonderful places for my own personal family. However, I now find myself in charge of 11 of us wanting to ski around 17th - 20th Dec for one week (micture of abilities and 2 kids who are new to skiing). Fortunately, we have the budget for catered (up to about $10,000 USD.) Most of the offers I have had are in France (Meribel, Tignes, La Tania, Meribel) and Austria (Nassfeld). Trouble is, the deeper I dig, the more I get the impression that some of the promises vis a vis swanky catering and copious wine start falling apart when you actually arrive. (And don't even get me started about whether there'll be any snow or not!)Tour companies talk about the "false economy" of self catering....but frankly, 3 of us are great cooks............and with that budget we get to pick and choose our restaurants......
Well ski passes and kit hire is less than I thought, so that's ok. But really, honestly, when it comes to food, what would you snowheads do??????
And even if you're a tour company or owner, throw your views into the mix........I have 9 months to figure it all out............
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I'd go with SuperTravel every time.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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If you're happy to go to the Boulangerie every morning and during the day buy your food, cook it with less than idea equipment or eat out every night then go self catering.
If you'd rather someone serve you breakfast every morning, have a fresh cake ready for you every afternoon after you ski, serve you at least a 3 course meal every evening with wine and not worry about dividing all the bills by 11 each time and generally take the hassle out of everything for you go catered.
As for the wine; generally not the best quality (but OK all the same unless you book somewhere really cheap) and as a general rule of thumb the free wine starts with your starter and finishes at desert, how much you get during that time is upto you. Also how nice you are to your hosts counts for a lot too... if we had guests who were, polite, pleasant and generally a laugh we gave them predinner drinks, made sure they had plenty of wine during the meal always left them with a full bottle(s) after desert.. if we didn't think that much of them, the corks came off at starter, we were slow to replenish and corks went back on as desert finished.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| marcellus wrote: |
| If you're happy to go to the Boulangerie every morning and during the day buy your food, cook it with less than idea equipment or eat out every night then go self catering. |
Or book an apartment where the service includes a boulangerie order being delivered to you door each morning, supermarket shops on your behalf while you ski, and a full-size kitchen with all the modern facilities and equipment you could need.
You don't have to book a rubbish self-catering apartment.
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Going to the boulangerie in the morning is one of the non-skiing highlights of my holidays, usually. It makes me feel all rustic and pretend-French.
That and you get the chance to ogle the inevitably stunning 18 year old bakery girls who work there.
Happy days.
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Catering vs self catering is a very personal thing and depends entirely on your group. For myself and my group, self-catering is a complete turn-off. We don't want to have to shop, cook and clean whilst on holiday and we have awkward dietary requirements which would mean more than one choice of meal for the group.
So, you need to think about the following things: Are there any dietary requirements? Would everyone want to eat at the same time (hotels often offer more than one sitting or a dining 'window' rather than a specific time)? How would you manage the financial aspect of shopping for a large group? How would you manage the work involved, would there be some people who don't pull their weight? How would you do all the shopping, having a car and going to a bigger supermarket down the mountain would probably work out cheaper for a large group?
Then there's the accommodation aspect. Some full occupancy self catering apartments might be extremely crowded, but you risk empty bed supplements if you don't fill them.
Lots to think about.
Obviously you can always eat out every night, but half board would definitely be much cheaper than that.
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Just back from catered holiday with Hundred Hills in Val d Isere, and would really recommend the catered option.
As a mom who skis full day, I loved to come home to a chalet and have a nice bath or shower while someone else worried about what to feed the ravenous kids at 18h00, then go down in jeans and Ts to a lovely dinner. Food was more than enough (huge portions) and nice wine. We supplemented it with our own choices from the supermarket when we felt like it, got some lovely champagnes and some cassis for kir royals before dinner. Supermarket prices really good.
You get to go out one night as well , and can make that a special dinner if you want to. We had a most memorable evening at the Le Clochetons restaurant 5min walk from the chalet.
The convenience especially with kids is worth a lot in my opinion. I love to cook, and do so most days at home, but would rather spend my time on the slopes than shopping and planning and now at least I feel like I have had a holiday too.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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One point to bear in mind is that you are looking at the Christmas week, which means that a lot of accomodation, catered or not, tends to book out pretty quickly, espcially the better ones.
I would be surprised if some places are not alredy fully booked up for Christmas 2011.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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beccaboo, welcome to snowheads.  This is an oft-debated question on Snowheads. Thing is, you can get very poor catered options, or absurdly expensive and swanky (way outside your budget) and equally you can get terrible apartments, or you can get very nice apartments. And everything in between.
The "catered chalet" option tends to be very British, and mainly (not exclusively by any means) offered in France. But of course there is also the option of hotels - generally more choice of hotels in Austria and Switzerland than in France.
For me, with that group, at Christmas, the choice of resort would be hugely more important than the choice of accommodation, and in particular the availability of top quality tuition for the beginner kids, and any others who want lessons.
Where have you skied before, and what sort of resort do you like?
You're right, you can afford to eat some meals out (though your budget, reasonable as it is, would certainly not stretch to eating out too often in the swankier restaurants) and if you enjoy cooking, some meals in would be agreeable and sociable too. But there are not huge numbers of apartments or chalets where a party of that size can be really comfortably accommodated, with plenty of bathrooms, and eat round one good table. they certainly exist but at Christmas they will not be cheap. I researched that kind of accommodation, for a group exactly that size, a couple of Christmases ago in a very obscure French resort and they were at least 3000 euros for the week. First week in January they were half the price.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I find that catered chalets offer much better value than we'd get eating out, and in many cases are no more expensive than cooking for the group.
Our group trips which run the week before cost about £400 including flights, transfers, accommodation and chalet board, as well as the backup of having a TO deal with any issues we might have, people to clean up each day, breakfast on the table every day, unlimited wine. That, to me, is unbeatable.
One difficulty you are going to have is that you either need to travel on the Friday, the 16th, and return on Xmas Eve, or travel on the Sunday or Monday and come back on Boxing Day or after. No TOs that I could find would run transfers or flights on Xmas Day. This year is more of a problem than the last couple. Worth considering, if you are doing self-catered and arranging your own travel then you can book it for whenever they will take the booking.
One TO we've travelled with before and had some great trips has been Ski Olympic. Definitely worth looking at. If you are happy to arrange your own travel to Geneva, Rude Chalets are possibly the best chalets we've stayed in, food and facilities were just incredible for the price.
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I've never had a catered meal in an Austrian hotel that was worse than 'very good.' If you've got the money, going catered is ace and takes the stress out of everything. If you don't go catered, and cook cheaply/sensibly for yourself, you could potentially stretch the budget to an extra week.
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You know it makes sense.
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| Quote: |
I've never had a catered meal in an Austrian hotel that was worse than 'very good.'
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I have, the only week I spent in an Austrian hotel, the food was truly grim. However, we were supposed to be in a catered Inghams chalet which was an annex to the hotel and they'd messed up the kitchen arrangements and we had to eat in the hotel. I suspect that the budget given by Inghams was a bit tight, but there was no excuse for the rubbish we were served up. Then one night, at 1 am, four of our party got stuck when the lift broke down leaving them between floors. My son, who had walked up the stairs (and who speaks pretty fluent mountain German) went to knock up the proprietors to get them out (after a night on the beers it wasn't a good idea to leave them in there too long) and was told to get lost. So he rang the fire brigade who got them out.
We were just unlucky, clearly, but it's not true to say that Austrian hotels, and their food, is invariably good.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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beccaboo,
I do quite a lot of self catering of groups of eight and occasionally more. I have generally found it much cheaper than going with a tour operator at peak time. I generally get the appartment/chalet via the tourist office web site either semi directly through the tourist office or through their list of accommodation providers. Having said that I have not self catered at Christmas and don't know what hte accommodation premium is.
For us it works well as folk enjoy the cooking and sitting around having a natter. Obviously it will depend very much on individual preferences. We would not go for a place without reasonable facilities. EG numbers of bathrooms and a dishwasher. Our demands have increased as the children have got older some our older accommodation was very spartan(and cheap).
If your week includes xmas or is the week following xmas into new year a lot of popular places book early, I would not hang about too long.
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Poster: A snowHead
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I really like talking to you guys! I LIKE this forum!
There were some mega good points made by all. It has been 6 years since I last ski-ed and that was whilst we lived in Norway. The catered options we think we can stretch to are in Les Gets and Tignes (Les Brevieres.) I am British, married to a Texan with two kids. The rest of the party are all extended family from the US. Frankly, we may very well be the nicest, easiest going chalet customers you ever met. Seriously, this fam-damily loves nothing more than to hire a massive house in Texas lake country and invite everyone and their dogs for a 25 person extended barbeque over July 4th and NO-ONE ever gets bent out of shape. We are the muckiest of muckers-inners! We would be conspicuously nice to chalet staff because we just like folks. Cooking holds no fears and my second son's favourite food is broccoli - fussy we are not!
We are all traveling from different locations. We reside in Qatar, others are in Saudi and Bahrain, the rest in Houston or Dallas. We've been quoted for an 8 night stay. We will all arrove at different crazy times and bumble our way there. My personal family will probably leave via Bourg St Maurice and train it overnight to Rome, flying home from there.
You can see why it all gets complex! I fancy the 'faux french rusticity' of shopping for bread (though not necessarily the 18 YO bakery girls - are there any bakery boys??) I also fancy the idea of taking 'mummy time off.'
On balance I err towards catered, so I suppose the next question is.........guys, critique my choice of resorts whydontcha?
And DO reply becaue I have a sprained ankle and haven't been to the gym in 6 days which pisses me right off!
Besos
Becca
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| pam w wrote: |
We were just unlucky, clearly, but it's not true to say that Austrian hotels, and their food, is invariably good. |
Lucky I didn't say then then 
Sounds like you had a pretty crap experience though, hotel sounds a bit dodge.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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beccaboo, Les Brevieres will be very reliable for snow in the area as a whole, it is right at the bottom of the Tignes area overshadowed by cliffs and a dam and won't get sun at xmas if this is important.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| T Bar wrote: |
| beccaboo, Les Brevieres will be very reliable for snow in the area as a whole, it is right at the bottom of the Tignes area overshadowed by cliffs and a dam and won't get sun at xmas if this is important. |
T-Bar, Darling, I live in the middle east.........I can do without sun! Seriously, that helps cos we will need to have pretty warm clobber....glad to hear about the snow tho'
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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beccaboo, really difficult, because if it's quite a nice snowy cold Christmas Les Gets would be better - and the high wastes of Tignes possibly rather arctic and bleak. But if it's a muggy warmish Christmas without a lot of snow, you'd be glad to be up there with fast lifts to take you high and a glacier if all else fails. Les Gets probably a nicer "family base" than Les Brevieres, more gemuetlich.
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beccaboo,
Only takes 8 (0r 9 if one is a kiddie) but you could do worse than contact Max at www.chalet-chez-max.com in the small village of Sainte Foy which is just below teh Sainte Foy area and less than 10 minutes to Tignes Les Brevieres - we skiid in Tignes all weekend
3 of us stayed there last weekend and it was seriously GOOD. Excellent food, excellent wine, excellent chalet, great location, great company, great chalet host. He also has other lcoal contacts if you need a few more beds.
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| beccaboo wrote: |
| BTW I didn't realise I was being contentious!! Hooray! |
Not surprising - it shouldn't really be a contentious issue! As someone who runs a place that offers both catered and self-catered options, I have no interest in promoting one over the other... but individuals do defend their own choices quite fiercely! I think pam summed it up very well - you get good and bad whether you choose catered or self-catered, and everything in between. In general, it seems to me that the self-catered option is portrayed as being far more complicated than it needs to be. If you're travelling with a group of friends, it's simple to establish whether you've got enough people to cover the number of nights you want to cook v eating out, and whether any fussy eaters will be ok. If not, book the catered option.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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There are pros and cons of either option - I've done both. All our catered holidays were nearer the budget end of the scale, and all were good But, overall, I prefer to DIY and my strongest feelings are about hotels, which I'm not fond of. I've stayed in a range, mostly for work (with the british tax payer paying ) and they're convenient for an overnight stopover, but as a holiday option they don't interest me much. But I don't understand why people are so black and white in support, or condemnation, of any way of doing it. I couldn't really work up such passion about methods of organising something like a ski holiday. It all depends!! It depends a lot on what kind of friends/family you have. We had an enjoyable holiday renting a chalet in Les Gets with 11 people in 6 en suite bedrooms. Each room cooked for a night, and the final night we went to a restaurant. Problem solved, little organisation involved, we ate well, there was no unseemly competition, we all had a great week's skiing. But if our friends had been idle time-wasters or generally incompetent I'd have booked us all into a chalet.
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beccaboo, Les Gets is a super little town and I think you are at a point of flipping a coin for SC/Catered. However at that time I would consider Morzine which is bigger but still a great proper French town that happens to be a ski resort as you can get across to the full PdS/Avoriaz area which is higher and more snow secure.
If you want Christmas you had better get a shift on as most of the good places are booked year to year.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Self-catering almost certainly will be very difficult if you don't have a car as the average resort supermarket contains three duck breasts, two steaks and twenty bags of pasta and a thousand bottles of genepy/chartreuse. And driving to the supermarket may well take you an hour or more even if the roads are clear.
As a general rule I would always choose to self cater on holiday, but not in a ski resort - why bother when you have an underpaid chalet girl to do everything for you virtually for free.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| beccaboo wrote: |
| Chasseur wrote: |
beccaboo, welcome to snowHeads
Nice contentious first post....
Fortunately, I've not had a bad, or close to bad catered chalet experience. The best undoubtedly was with Hannibals at Les Marmottes quite outstanding food, both in quality and quantity, and the wine (unlimited) was superb (the guy there is wine merchant). Situated on the edge of town, reasonable array of bars and restaurants and 6 minute stroll to the lifts. Ski down to village. |
Looks truly lovely. I shall get in touch. My husband and I dive and also ski. The boys are hooked on snorkelling and can't wait to dive, we would love to hook them into skiing too so this first trip is quite important. I appreciate the info! BTW I didn't realise I was being contentious!! Hooray! |
I learned to ski in that area - as did my son and daughter. There are some great skiing bowels where the beginner areas are located and plenty of mileage opportunities for the more experienced. Good off-piste options too. The chalet host (wine merchant) is also an ESF instructor (was the local director for a while), so you'd probably get some good support there too. I've stayed there 4 times - no commercial interest, just confident the experience will deliver.....assuming the snow Gods do 
Nearest airport is Turin, though Lyon/Grenoble isn't too bad either.
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James the Last,
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| the average resort supermarket contains three duck breasts, two steaks and twenty bags of pasta and a thousand bottles of genepy/chartreuse. And driving to the supermarket may well take you an hour or more even if the roads are clear. |
Assuming a decent amount of fridge and other storage space in your property, and a finely honed shopping list, shopping in a big supermarket at the last town in the valley, before going up to the resort, should largely take care of that problem.
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| Quote: |
the average resort supermarket contains three duck breasts, two steaks and twenty bags of pasta and a thousand bottles of genepy/chartreuse
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Hmm. Our resort is small and little known, but it has a decently stocked supermarket, a terrific butchers and several traiteurs. None of them is cheap, obviously, but if it wasn't possible to shop in a valley supermarket it would still be possible to eat extremely well. And, of course, even small resorts will have a decent range of restaurants.
There are some cogent reasons for not wanting to self-cater but the lack of decent stuff on sale is probably not one of them. Not in France, anyway. Self-catering in Serbia did present a few challenges..... one day I used my hastily-learnt Serbo Croat to buy a bag of wrinkled apples, some potatoes and some "kaymak" (not the way it's spelt) cream cheese from a couple of local farmers in old macs tied up with string, because the only supermarket was closed. They probably thought it was their lucky day when a foreigner with 20 words of their language and incapable of bargaining with them hove their way.
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Poster: A snowHead
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