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Ski Packages

Christine Ottery cherry-picks the sweetest deals.
Package holidays are proving better value than ever in the tough financial climate, and there’s something out there to suit all types of skier.

Bansko, in Bulgaria, packs plenty of punch as a destination for complete beginners, and it’s not half bad for intermediates either – think 65km of groomed pistes wending through pine forests. In the past decade, £80 million has been poured into the resort, making it the most modern in Eastern Europe, replete with spanking Doppelmayr lifts. Notably, there’s a good English-speaking ski school, and mellow slopes for the ski virgins to start learning their first turns. Neilson (neilson.co.uk) offers accommodation, transfers, and flights from £350 for seven nights in a three-star hotel on a B&B basis, but they offer a range of digs up to the swish Kempinsky Grand Arena for about double that price. You can pre-book Neilson’s Beginners Ski Pack, which includes a week’s lift passes, tuition and equipment hire for the bargain price of £149. Bulgaria is outside of the Eurozone, so eating out seems ridiculously cheap.

If it’s good enough for Catherine Zeta Jones, and her offspring, it’s good enough for us. Pop over the pond to the resort of Mont Tremblant in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains. The flight is only seven hours – just about do-able with the screaming brats/little angels in tow, unlike resorts in Western Canada. Transfers from Montreal airport last one and a half hours. Parents will love the pedestrian village with its boutiques, charming architecture, slopeside accommodation, French ambiance and food. Kids will get off on the brilliant ski school instruction and plethora of other activities to be enjoyed en famille, such as: tubing, snowshoeing, sleigh rides, paintballing, and a treetop assault course. Canada specialist Frontierski (frontier-ski.co.uk) can create bespoke packages, for example four flights, transfers, and a one-bed condo sleeping four starts from a reasonable £2,871.


Tapping into both the eco-cred and romance of travelling by train, Inghams (inghams.co.uk) have launched a new sleeper service to Swiss resorts that sees you jumping on at 8.30 at night in St Pancras and hopping off your destination about 6.30am. Saas-Fee in Switzerland has taken the quality of its environment and facilities seriously for many years, a member of the association of traffic-free holiday resorts (GAST), it was one of the earliest to ban cars in 1951, and as the road from Saas-Grund down in the valley only reached this high-altitude village in that same year, it can be said that Saas-Fee has never truly had car traffic on its streets. Inghams offer 11 properties in Saas Fee ranging from three-star to luxury five-star. Stay at the three-star Dom Hotel for seven nights on a half-board basis, starting from £584 per person, with travel by train from London St Pancras. Travel by Eurostar London to Paris and TGV to Basel, then connect onto the fantastic Swiss rail network to any Swiss resort. This service involves a change of station in Paris.

If you are simply loaded and the words ‘imminent recession’ don’t put the fear of God into you, get all the bells and whistles that your heart desires by staying at a boutique chalet with Descent International (descent.co.uk). New for this year, the identical twin chalets of Himalaya and Toit du Monde in Val D’Isere, designed by the mother of Vanessa Mae, Pamela Nicholson (who knows her sublime five-star intimately), take luxe to a new level, with: baths that convert in to waterfall showers or steam rooms, bedrooms adorned with heavy crimson hangings and carved wood, plus sunken ice buckets, and an outdoor/indoor swimming pool. All of this sumptuous attention to detail, free-flowing champagne, and five attentive staff to cater for your every whim, including a chef trained with Michelin-starred Herbert Bergen, comes at a hefty price. But if you can fill a chalet in the off-season, you can choose two from a menu of different activities, at no added cost, such as paragliding, spy training, spa treatments, husky rides, or hot air balloon rides. ‘Maximum Descent’ weeks: 11/18/25 January, and 8/15/22 March and a lead-in price for the Himalaya or Toit Du Monde is £21,000 for the chalet (sleeps 8).

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