Time was when a ski holiday meant one thing for most kids: long days spent alongside 15 other children they’d never met before, snaking down the slope behind an instructor yelling “bend ze knees”, before taking a lift and doing it all over again.
Not so in 2023, where small group lessons are now the norm — and there’s a fun-first ethos that encompasses a host of other activities too, from leaping off a mock helicopter with the ski patrol to playing hide and seek in the snow for avalanche safety training. Welcome to family skiing 2.0.
“Family ski holidays have evolved,” explains Tommy Hicks, childcare operations manager with Esprit, one of Britain’s leading family ski holiday specialists. “A lot of our old childcare activities were geared around indoor activity, with a focus on toys and messy play, whereas now, with our Mountain Academy, we focus a lot more on physical activities that make the most of being outdoors in the mountains and in the snow, which help the kids learn but also have fun. Kids are just more modern now, and the feedback on these changes has been brilliant.”
So what makes a good family ski holiday? Chemmy Alcott, Britain’s most successful ski racer, host of Ski Sunday, and mother to two sons, aged six and four, recommends that you forget the luxurious accommodation or posh resorts. “Kids don’t care about those things,” she says. “The most important thing is to stay as close as possible to the slopes.”
For this reason, Méribel is one of her favourite resorts, where much of the accommodation is ski-in/ski-out. It’s part of the vast three valleys area, which is also home to Les Menuires, another firm family favourite, thanks to its dedicated beginners’ area that’s separate to the main slopes and where your children can have the chance to leap out of that helicopter.
The three valleys is particularly good because it caters for all types of winter holidaymaker — meaning parents are just as well served as their children. Alongside 600km of slopes to explore, it offers a variety of après ski activities, including the chance to tuck into a fondue in an igloo at 2,350m above Orelle, enjoy a ride on Les Menuires’ La Mine mountain luge, or — new for this season — mountain yoga sessions above Courchevel.
Also making the cut on Alcott’s shortlist is St Anton in the Austrian Tirol region. Given its reputation for tough slopes and a boisterous après-ski scene, it’s a surprising choice, but she rates highly the Rendl area, which is set aside for kids, plus it’s a short transfer from the closest airport in Innsbruck.
This is exactly the kind of information that you’ll be able to glean for yourself at the London Snow Show, taking place later this month, where representatives from these resorts, and many more, will be on hand alongside several specialist tour operators, including Esprit and Crystal Ski Holidays. The show, which is being run in partnership with the Evening Standard for the first time, gives visitors the only opportunity this side of the ski season to quiz the experts face-to-face — asking, for example, up to what age do resorts offer free lift passes for children — and it provides the ideal opportunity to compare and contrast the options so that you can plan your ideal family ski holiday, based on your own specific needs.
Those needs could include safeguarding procedures, or help with accommodating a neurodivergent child. In the past, such requirements may have restricted — or even removed — the options for some families, but today, it’s something that holiday specialists such as Esprit are more than happy to help with. They’ll be at the Snow Show alongside organisations such as Disability Snowsport UK, preaching a message that with a little forward planning, the mountains are now open to all.
“We’re working hard to offer affordable, fun and accessible opportunities for all families, both here in the UK and in the Alps,” says DSUK’s CEO, Virginia Anderson. “So, come talk to us about how to do it.”
