Find fantastic accommodation

Hotels, chalets and apartments. The Alps has plenty of wonderful places to stay. You can feel spoilt for choice, but it can also be overwhelming. So how do you find the place that's most suitable for your party?

One of the best ways is to get advice and recommendations from people who know their stuff and who care about whether a particular hotel, chalet or apartment is going to be the best choice for you. SnowCarbon can help.

We know some great places to stay, and we work with travel agencies and ski tour operators who know even more places than the ones we know first hand. So we can almost always make useful suggestions and help you find great accommodation options. 

Those recommendations, combined with some online reseach that you can do yourself, puts you in a good position to find somewhere ideal for your holiday.

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Ski-in-ski-out chaletsPhoto: Daniel Elkan

The three ski-holiday components

Assuming that you want to find or create a ski holiday by train, there are three elements that you want to get right:

• the train journey
• the ski resort
• the accommodation

You might already have decided which ski resort you want to go to, and therefore simply be looking for accommodation options and advice on the journey.  Or, you might like help with choosing a ski resort and accommodation too. In either case, we can help you make the best decisions for your party. 

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Catered chalets

Photo: Daniel Elkan

Catered ski chalets are a wonderful thing. If you've never experienced one before, it's a peculiarly British concept that continues to enjoy popularity. For many skiers and boarders, it's far and away their favourite way to stay in the Alps.

It's not surprising why, because it's the closest thing to a home-from-home in the middle of a snowy wonderland. Many catered chalets are former farmhouses, located on or a near the slopes, beautifully converted into comfortable lodgings. Catered chalets usually accommodate between eight and 24 people. Chalet staff (either living in the chalet, or nearby) look after guests the entire week, making breakfast, tea and dinner and tidying and cleaning rooms. If the chalet is located more than a short walk to the slopes, most catered chalet companies include a shuttle service, where guests are driven to, and collected from the slopes each day.

Many chalets have a hot-tub on the terrace for a post-ski or post dinner soak, glass of bubbles held aloft for that this-is-what-winning-feels-like cliche. But fair enough, it really is.

Some catered chalets are offered only for sole occupancy (i.e. you can only hire the entire chalet) while others give the option to book the chalet by the room, thereby sharing the chalet with other guests that you don't know.

The upside of shared chalets is that if you are only two friends, a couple, or a small group, you can enjoy hospitality with a hopefully like-minded group of people who you might end up skiing with. Lifelong friendships are created this way.  Of course, there's always the risk that you might end up the whole week sharing with people that you find boring or mildly annoying – or vice versa!

Catered chalet are most prevalent in French ski resorts. You'll also find them in some Swiss resorts and a few Austrian resorts too.

Value for money

Catered ski chalets have a higher up-front cost than self-catered apartments, but all things considered they can offered excellent value for money. Breakfast, tea (i.e. cakes, tea and coffee on your return from the slopes) and a three or four course dinner with unlimted wine every evening (except one staff night off, usually). No time and money spent shopping, deciding what to cook, cooking or washing up.

But more than that, you get a place that has more shared space. Some of these old converted farmhouses have huge lounge and dining spaces, even games rooms. You just don't get that kind of space in an apartment - albeit in a catered chalet you are sharing this large space with more people.

Tour operator or independent?

Not all catered chalets are of the same type or style. They vary greatly. The greatest influence on this will be whether the catered chalet is one run by a large ski tour operator such as Inghams or Crystal, or whether it's run by a smaller independent chalet company.  The smallest of these companies might just be a husband and wife couple running one chalet.

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What's the difference? Well, take the example of the independent chalet operated by one couple. They probably were skiers who stated in catered chalet, perhaps worked a ski season and then thought: 'We could do this better.'  They searched and found a property they loved, took it over or converted it and now are dedicated to making the chalet the best it can be. They've decorated the chalet according to their taste and made it as comfortable as possible for guests. The food might be good or it might be absolutely amazing. This is their life's work and they take it seriously, wanting (and needing) to make sure their guests enjoy the best possible experience. Their business lives or dies by it's reputation, reviews and word-of-mouth marketing.

Compare this with a chalet run by a large tour operator.  It's much less likely to be a quirky old converted farmhouse building. Decor, service, facilities will have been decided by head office. The food might be OK, it might be good or it might be great. It's unlikely to be amazing. Staff will be younger and less experienced (but still could be excellent).  These larger companies don't need to care quite as much about the guest experience, it just needs to be good enough.

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Self-catered apartments and chalets

In France particularly, self-catering is another popular type of ski accommodation. Over the past 15 or so years, the standard of self-catering accommodation has continued to rise, in tern fuelling the proportion of skiers who opt for it.

The majority of self-catered apartments are part of large residences. Many of these residences have shared facilities such as a swimming pool and spa complex, games rooms and gym. For families, this gives children more to do and allowes them to make friends with other kids too.

But for groups there are also self-catered chalets too. This is effectively like renting an apartment, but instead of it being within a larger residence, it's a stand-alone chalet-style building instead.

With self-catering, you pay less up front (because meals are not included) and have the flexibility of choosing when and where you eat.  If you don't feel like cooking, there are always going to be restaurants to enjoy instead.

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Hotels

There are wonderful hotels in ski resorts too. Of course, they come in all types of size and budget.

The advantages of a hotel are the fact that you can go as a couple or just two friends, book a room and you are sorted. You get the benefit of whatever the facilities that the hotel has.

This can work well with families too, depending on the kind of rooms that the family has, and whether the children are old enough to have their own room or whether they should be in an adjoining one.

In recent years, hotels in the Alps have innovated with what they offer, decor, vibe, activities. There are ones that have kept their traditional decor and charm, others that have gone for a very modern, quirky vibe – and everything in between.

In terms of choosing, a good approach is to combine online research with getting suggestions from holiday providers / advisors who know the resorts and accommodation there really well, so you can find somewhere to stay that really fits with what you are looking for.

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Contact SnowCarbon

Snowcarbon Founder, Daniel

If you'd like advice and suggestions for great options, whether catered chalet, self-catered chalet or apartment, or a hotel, SnowCarbon can help.

Get in touch and SnowCarbon's Founder, Daniel, will respond to start helping you find great places.

With 21 years in the ski industry, Daniel has a wealth of knowledge and contacts.

You can contact Daniel by visiting the SnowCarbon contact page.