Taking your kids on holiday always involves careful planning, but when you’re booking an action-based holiday like skiing, there are a few more considerations.
A ski holiday is a far cry from an all-inclusive in the sun, where you can pencil in a couple of activities and mostly wing it by the pool. If you’re taking children skiing, it pays to plan ahead and have an itinerary in mind before you head off.
Here I’m sharing with you some of my best tips for a fun and, crucially, stress free holiday away skiing with kids:
Practice Makes Perfect
If your family are novice skiers, then it makes sense to get in some lessons before you head off. Not everyone as access to snowy slopes all year round, but a few pre ski holiday visits to a dry slope makes for the perfect place to gain some skills.
You can book lessons for both skiing and snowboarding at literally every UK ski slope much cheaper than in the Alps and, once you’ve gained your confidence, you can just turn up to practice for peanuts. It won’t be quite the same as the real thing, but it’s a great place to start, and ensures you get so much more from your skiing abroad – consider it an investment in making your main holiday so much more rewarding!
Book a Family Friendly Resort
When you take your family on holiday, you want to feel like your kids are welcome. By picking a resort that both welcomes children and caters to them, you can ensure your kids can have the best time too.
Rather than speaking to a mainstream travel agent, if you book your trip with a ski holiday provider like sno.co.uk, you can use that expertise to find the type, size and price of family-friendly ski holiday that’s right for your gang. Finding a vacation which caters to the small people in your group, means you can benefit from a little bit of adult time while they are occupied, and the kids can have loads of fun doing the extra activities based around playing in the snow.
Book Early to Get the Best of Everything
I’m a big advocate for planning everything incredibly early. My husband might sometimes say unnecessarily early – but I disagree. If you get in early, you can always get the best of everything.
For me this means the best early-bird deals, the exact accommodation that I want and, when taking newbies to the slopes, lessons at the best times to suit the sort of day we prefer.
A good example: we always want lessons in the mornings, so we can ski more casually in the afternoon when legs are tired and we just want to cruise around resort together. But surprise surprise, we’re no the only ones – try to book morning lessons at the last minute and you’ll find they’re all full, relegating you to trying to focus on your ski coach after a tiring morning and hearty lunch! This rule goes double for school holidays, where all ski schools are fully booked well in advance of peak skiing weeks like Feb half-term.
If you’re an early bird, the planning is your oyster! Leaving things to the last minutes limits your choices. To be fair, this rule goes for every type of holiday in our house!
Pack Thin/Wicking and Winter Layers
Holiday packing might just be the most stressful thing you can do in a run up a holiday. With a ski holiday, you know two things for sure – 1. it’s going to be cold outside, and 2. it’s going to be warm inside.
I cannot stress this enough but layers are your friend. You don’t want to put the chill in children on your lovely family holiday. Being too cold is never any fun, but being too hot indoors is always a pain too. Buy some thermals, bring some jumpers and pack regular basics for when you’re sipping hot chocolate. They’ll all work together, I promise.
The final and biggest, but surprisingly unknown, tip here is to ‘bring spare ski gloves’. They get wet and can take more than one overnight to dry out, but you cannot put wet gloves onto little hands before they go out into the cold each morning. Thankfully kids ski gloves can be basic and cheap to get a second pair – probably because of the other reason to buy spares… that they get lost all the time!
Rent the Ski Equipment
Unless you’re planning on being a very regular skier, you will save a lot of money by renting everything. This is especially true when you’ve got kids. Since kids are always growing, you’ll find they immediately grow out of anything you’ve just bought them – much like everything else you buy them. There are many ski clothing rental websites now too, and you can even rent adult ski clothing from John Lewis now!
If you do decide to buy them ski jacket and trousers, look out for ski clothes where you can cut the red stitching after a year or two, to release an extra few inches in the arms and legs as they grow – it’s genius idea which we’ve seen in brands like North Face and Burton, which might make good kit more in line with the price of cheap stuff, because you buy new gear less often.
Keep the Kids Entertained Away from the Slopes
You can’t be skiing all day every day with complete novices or very young ones, so it’s important to plan for other fun ways to spend your time. Things like sledging and simply playing in the snow to make a snowman or snowball fights are always fun but, it pays to plan for other activities. If there’s a kids’ club available, book in a couple of sessions, especially after the first couple of days on the slopes when tiredness can kick in – you don’t want the magic and novelty to wear off just by making the skiing relentless, so remember that 1. your little schussers have less staying power and 2. learning to ski is much harder work than when you’ve got the knack. Pack some colouring books and pencil crayons. It’s probably worth bringing iPads too, then at least you can entertain little ones while everyone else is getting ready in the morning.
Now you’ve ticked all my must-do things off your list, and you’re ready to enjoy your dream ski holiday, the final must-remember is to take LOTS of pictures, because you’ll make incredible memories. You can’t beat a winter-sports week in the mountains for making memories, and the experience will stay with your family forever. There’s nothing like the anticipation of our annual snowy adventure together and, speaking to older friends, skiing even something that will have them coming back to holiday with you when they’ve grown and flown!