Best catered chalet company?

A snowHead

Hi folks

Wonder if anyone can help?

Having previously always self-organised, since the birth of our kids we've gone with Esprit.

Esprit have been excellent (and I heartily recommend them to anyone with young children) but our kids have sort of outgrown the activities side of things, so we want to find an Esprit-like company which fully caters, arranges flights and transfers, can arrange kids' ski lessons in English but is more aimed at families generally, not people who need creches and snowclub etc.

We want a UK-based company and any recommendations of people who are good and reasonably priced would be much appreciated.

If any owner-operators read this and want to suggest themselves, we will go anywhere in Europe that is snow-sure, preferably within 2hrs of the airport, with plenty of intermediate terrain for the kids. Looking at second week in Jan possibly, possibly later.

All suggestions/help much appreciated, thanks.

A snowHead

Ski Beat?

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

All of them, they're all excellent.

If you don't believe that then, based on personal experience, I'd go with Mark Warner (more small hotels than chalet, but good all the same), Skiworld for cheap and cheerful, and YSE for general high standards and fun and the best in Val d'Isere.

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Aren't Ski Olympic part of the same group that owns Ski Esprit? Worth having a look at them possibly.

Crystal also run family orientated types of accommodation along chalet/hotel lines that may cater more to your specific requirements.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

supertravel

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Olympic are independent. SkiTotal is the other half of Esprit, both of which are now owned by Hotelplan which also owns Inghams.

I rate Olympic as slightly better than Total.

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TRy a crystal catered ski chalet - we went through the same process as you , esprit when younger and as ours got older and a bit less mollycoddling required we started to go with crystal more , worked for us

After all it is free

Thanks Wags Embarassed

Hi northernsoulboy,

We're an independant catered chalet company called Ice and Fire - you can see what we offer by clicking the link in my tag line. Flights aren't included though.

If you're looking for a package including flights I would recommend SkiTotal (the other half of esprit and very much the same standard in terms of chalets etc), Ski Beat, Inghams or Ski World (go for one of their rated chalets for better food).

Happy planning . . .

Heather

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northernsoulboy, if the kids are not too old yet then I would look at Skifamille. Our kids were 9 and 7 the time we stayed with them. The tricky bit I think with a catered arrangement comes if you do not take up the whole property, which is what we have always done in the past. You want confidence that others in the chalet will have a family as well, you don't what a group of 20 year old lads, and I expect a group like that would not want kids there either - you are all on holiday. However, Skifamille do not do the package with flights and others on the thread have made suggestions too

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

another Ski Olympic vote

snow reports

I've used Crystal, Inghams, and Neilson. Neilson seem to have little choice these days? Unless it's jsut for my local airports.... Tbh I couldn't say anything hugely positive or negative about them. Depends on your host in most cases as they're the face of the company to someone like me, we had a young lad with Neilsons once and he was a right laugh but had complaints made about him for being hungover the week before apparently!

I've booked 3 chalet holidays with Crystal for this season, 2 for 1 lift passes and other offers have just made them head and shoulders above anyone else on price this year I've found.

Yep, I'd go for ski Olympic too.

You know it makes sense.

Another vote for Ski Olympic. Good for value , staff , food and guiding.

Also - but we have not been with them for a few years - Silverski .

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

personal view. crystal can be very verry hit or miss depending on their staff in my view. have been with them to 3v's 3 times, selva once and vail twice inc. honeymoon.

so in order or events.

selva - average to okay, found the staff a little grumpy but overall accom and package was good.
la tania in p&v accom - rooms terrible, staff non existant but s/c so no issues with food so not a big problem.
vail - good overall, but again accom was self catered.
vail for honeymoon - expensive hotel, staff non existent pretty much overall average and let down by hotel which was not entirely crystaks fault
courchevel 1850 with crystal premium service - in a chalet we had previously stayed with supertravel so expecting good stuff, chalet was remodelled and very cramped, food terrible, staff average at best.

would i book with crystal again, probably not but maybe if the holiday was right.

esprit customer now as their childrens support is excellent. and diy for short and other trips. said earlier but supertravel have always provided excellent service, food and the prices arent bad either.

A snowHead

Would thoroughly recommend Ski Cuisine operating out of Meribel, been with them a couple of times, food good, staff good, locations good, their prices were not disimilar to a Crystal/Thompson trip to ADH where the food was poor and the chalet staff was grumpy. Also hear good things about Fish & Pips, same sort of deal.

A snowHead

+1 for Ski Olympic.

The mark of a good TO is not how they perform when things are going well, it's how they behave when things go wrong. In an industry where so much is at the mercy of outside factors (weather, transportation, etc.) on the odd occasion when things have not gone according to plan I've found Olympic's staff will go out of their way to make things better.

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

northernsoulboy, you say your looking for a chalet company which is "more aimed at families generally, not people who need creches and snowclub etc". Well I can't think of any chalet company which specialises in that market. Have you considered ClubMed?

In my experience, if you go with any chalet company during school hols you'll find plenty of other families staying there. If you go outside the school holidays you'll probably find that your kids are the only ones in the chalet.

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I've used Skiworld both in Europe (Val T - small apartment chalet - and Alpes D'Huez - chalet hotel) and the US (luxury chalet in Vail) and had a really good experience with all of them - they seem to be able to attract their staff back each year which is always a good indicator of a quality operator in my book - if they look after their staff, their staff will look after you - simples Little Angel

YSE are great and really know how to make your holiday stress free - from easy booking through their UK office, down to decent times on their Sunday flights that mean you don't need to be at the airport at 4am and don't have Saturday traffic queues. Again - they have staff returning year after year and they (by reputation) run a tight ship with their team and because they only have chalets in Val D'Isere you get the knowledge that the co-owner is in the village and on the case if things go wrong.

I've only used Crystal once which started off as being a terrible experience - the transfer bus dropped us off with a mini bus who spent the next two hours trying to find our 'Pension' only to find it was less that 150m from where we'd been dropped off. The Pension wasn't even what we had booked and was run by a very elderly lady who was more occupied with tending to her even more elderly mother than she was her guests, served jam at breakfast that was 2 years out of date and milk that had seen its day a good few days before. To be fair, the resort manager did arrange us alternative accommodation albeit a good few miles out of town, which was a wonderful family run 3* hotel (i.e. the 3* accommodation we had paid for) But then he totally failed to tell the lady at the pension who chased after us as we got in the taxi to demand payment for the night we had stayed there and who then made us feel as he had done us a favour and we should be forever in his debt for the rest of the week. Needless to say it will be a cold day in hell before I use crystal again Toofy Grin

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

YSE are the best I've used without a doubt, but only do Val d'isere.

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northernsoulboy,
Have used ski olympic and ski miquel in the past. Would highly recommend them both.
Seen older kids with olympic, but never seen kids of any age with ski miquel.

cheers Geoff

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

We decided to go with small independents having had 3 holidays with Crystal - we stayed in the infamous Hotel Totem in Flaine which is a listed 1960s building which was great .Unfortunately the food and staff were not .

Then Chalet Hotel Terrachu in Tignes le Lac . Staff fine , food very much on a budget and a strict low one too. Again a good building in a brilliant location, overlooking the lake. But I have never stayed in their chalets .

The real diiference when it matters as WiRED says is when things go wrong. My wife tore her ACL and the staff of Silverski were excellent. I think it helped that they tend to recruit across a wide age range and those in their 50s who have seen and done a lot can be very capable of sorting things out in a way I doubt the kids that work for Crystal would have been able to .

John

After all it is free

I always thought Ski Total were the adults version of Ski Esprit ( great if you dont have kids or they are over 12 ) - often go to the same chalets/hotels

Ski olympic look aimed at the totally adult market , with no kids in tow at all

The OP implied that there were kids, but more independant.

interestingly have stayed at le TOTEM in flaine, which was / is owned by langhams i believe and most tour companys have it available
it need a bit of work and a good lick of paint, but we found that the crystal staff were great there, and the food fine, and there was enough for a faily
large small army to eat)

it is quite difficult, once kids reach that age where they dont need mollycoddling all day, but can think of things to do , but they are still too young
to leave ( obviously if they can ski with you all day then this is easy ).

anyhow - sop far we have always had good experiences with both crystal & esprit, and currently i think crystal are better value for money in a lot of cases.

I guess using Langhams to run Le Totem was to surmount the problems Crystal had there when they ran it themselves which was when we stayed.

We have always shared with other families in Ski Olympic as it has been school hols. Also we have found SO staff to be quite relaxed about our older daughter ( from 14 yrs ) doing the ski guiding in a separate group from us .

We are about to go with Ski Esprit in Feb half term to Chalet Marta , Selva as it looks great value . Our kids are now 10 and 16 so we do not need the child care but SE say the other kids are in roughly the same age bracket which always helps.

I have found that most chalet companies will tell you the ages of the other kids booked in which is a help in choosing.

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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

We offer family holidays in Italy and France in catered chalets. www.mountainsunltd.com . I've been with MS many years now so sadly haven't had the opportunity to take holidays with other companies since having my son so can't make any first hand recommendations re child friendly companies or resorts so it's not that I'm only prepared to recommend my company it's just that I can't (before I get slated for mentioning MS on Snowheads in a relevant thread which has happened in the past Confused

). Hope you find what you're looking for though - with things the way they are there's a lot of options so shop around and get the best you can!

snow reports

Joanne Mountainsun, Kitty and I are confirmed for our holiday with you at your new hotel in Kronplatz. Looking forward to it, thank you to Robert for sorting us out with such a great deal too. Very Happy

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply. Lots of info for me to go through. Valid point by Wags, too.

You know it makes sense.

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

Hello RobW,
clearly a matter of luck and timing as to the make up of a chalet's guest list.
our son always seemed to be on his lonesome re any other kids to knock about with, but after his first week he skied with
us and our friends comfortably.

Hello Pam
We have used ski olympic a couple of times and found their staff efficient and also lovely young people too.
i'd also use the same description for ski miquel staff too. I think my advice to the OP would be to use a smaller
company every time, with the obvious caveat re the resorts they cover being usually very limited.

cheers Geoff

A snowHead

Ski Amis is another suggestion... travelled with them over the past 2 seasons and would again. Though this season I'm off to VT with Skiworld. Good luck!

A snowHead

small independants- owner run or directly supervised will probably be best.

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

YSE in Val d'isere

Started operating in 1991 and run a very tight ship.

They only operate in Val d'isere and have their own chartered flight (but only out of LGW).

One of the directors lives in Val d'isere all year around and has been there for more than 30 years.

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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

VIP and snowline, as was. We have been with them for the past 10 years and have been very impressed every time!

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I've used most of the bigger companies over the last 10 or so years, but the company we keep going back to is Skiworld. They have just got better and better, particularly over the last two or three years.
I think the thing that proves they are getting it right is while most operators have cut back their programme Skiworld are growing.

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

andyhull, Welcome to snowHeads!

After all it is free

The best Chalet company I've stayed with is Le Ski in one of their Val d'Isere chalets, they were great. There were a couple of teenagers of about 15 or 16 years old in the chalet too who got along with everyone no problem. They are a bit more pricey than some of the other operators but they are very good.

They are based in Huddersfield so my well be worth checking out northernsoulboy!

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northernsoulboy,

I think you are asking for something almost exactly like Esprit but without nannies.

Have you thought of Esprit?

Or Ski Total their grown up version- which is without childcare.

How old are your kids as if they are all youngish then the emphasis is still on kids....

Help!!

Best catered chalet company?

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