With the ski shows in late October and early November comes the start of the ski bargain hunting season. Tour Operators, Airlines, Resorts and innumerable other businesses that orbit around skiing are out to entice you with their wares.
The internet has made the job of hunting down cheap ski holidays a much quicker process – in theory! The problem is that whereas, pre-internet, we would go into a travel agent and either pick their brains or pick up the glossy brochures, we now have a much bigger amount of information to sift through.
The days of sitting down with a cup of coffee and the brochures of half a dozen tour operators has been replaced by hundreds or even thousands of cheap ski holiday opportunities. These run from single chalets to huge multinational conglomerates, all with deals to offer.
So, what’s the best way to get the right information without suffering from ‘deals overload’? Most holiday companies now offer email newsletters, which can bring their latest deals direct to your emailbox. Alpine Elements are an excellent example of a very pro-active tour company. Not only do they offer an enewsletter but they have an active Facebook page, post regular deals on Twitter and feature deals & competitions on their website’s homepage.
Another avenue towards cheap ski holidays are the ‘deals sites’. However, these are only able to highlight a cross section of a tour operators ski deals. You also have to be aware that many of these sites may only feature those companies who pay to be on there. This means that some choice deals may slip by unnoticed, and ‘your’ holiday is grabbed by someone else. However, as a snapshot of some of the better deals going around, these sites can be a useful part of the deal hunters arsenal.
To avoid spending to long searching through online offers do make sure that you only subscribe to companies which you like the look of, and who regularly offer new deals to the resorts and counties which you want. Too broad a trawl through skiing’s online holiday companies may only result in your becoming submerged under a mass of, often irrelevant, offers.
Once you have narrowed the field down to some carefully chosen cheap ski holidays be ready to strike! Many offers are available for a relatively short time, some have live airline prices (which invariably go up nearer the departure date), and others have limited availability.