Any good tips for booking last minute ski trips?

Got a week off at the end of January but we haven’t booked anything yet –
will probably leave it for another week or two to check conditions, but other than iglu & lastminute.com I’m a bit clueless as to where best to look….

Watches with Interest……

Look for small independent chalets trying to fill last minute spaces – just do loads of Googling in the area oyu want to go.

http://www.teletextholidays.co.uk/

http://holidays.easyjet.com/ski-holiday-deals.htm?utm_source=ej_CMS&utm_medium=EN_Homepage&utm_term=EJ_Hols&utm_content=StaticLinkTR3&utm_campaign=MainNav

Travel Zoo?

Plenty of time! The latest we’ve booked is 4 days before travel, got a bargain but it can be risky!

Current climate seems to mean less deals as tour operators are taking on less chalets and booking less planes.

We’ve used SkiWorld and they have been good. When leaving it very late, I’ve found them worth ringing as they can talk you through options, reserve rooms live and advise on flights. Some rooms were disappearing as we talked and trying to book online got ‘denied’ at checkout. Advice on the phone was excellent – have a shortlist of resorts and requirements plus some flexibility and they will find something great.

Regional flights fill up quick and you may be in for a longer transfer.

http://www.skiworld.co.uk/last-minute-ski-deals

Have also booked last minute with Ski Total and http://www.ifyouski.com/

Another more complicated but more flexible option is DIY – EasyJet to Geneva, hire a car or grab a shuttle bus and find your own hotel. Can give more details if that’s of interest…

Cheers all – great tips and suggestions.

Not sure about the DIY option – it never seems to work out all that much cheaper for the amount of hassle…

Getting excited now…

If your thinking of somewhere like Val D’Isere These are good

http://www.simplyvaldisere.com/

There is LOADS of snow at the moment – I want to go now – sod the Christmas Dinner, I want to be in Morzine.

A mate always recommends the snowheads forum.

http://www.igluski.com/

interested in other’s suggestions as well. If a good deal comes up, the inlaws can swivel, I’m going on a powder hunt!

If there’s only you, or a small group you could probably leave it until the week before to get some proper bargains (easily done out of school holiday time).

Direct Ski

Not known for cheap, but proper last minute Inghams, Crystal and Neilson can be fine.

As Mastiles says up there try some of the smaller companies like Ski Beat.

If you’re young enough you could try UCPA UCPA, they’re a bit like YHA and I think only take U40s. Never been but apparently very budget, but very good value.

Ski Miquel

Rocket Ski Again not been, but specialise in the budget end. Can also get school trips at their places.

any ski website will have last minute deals. http://www.crystalski.co.uk leaev it until about 2 weeks before, as snow could be great now but if it doesn’t snow where you want to go between now and when you go at end of Jan it can seriously suck! Went to morzine last year at the end of Jan and it was awful, Super Morzine we could’ve ridden the MTB’s not a DROP of snow! Only reason there was snow on Le Pleney was due to the snow cannons but over Christmas they’d had a massive dump! typical.

Interesting post, I seem to be on a lot of mailing lists from past trips and get emails weekely on last minute offers, some are good some not so!

I’ve found phoning up can really help as they will narrow down the search with and sometimes find deals that you couldn’t on line.

As cardiff points out, the personal touch works. can you believe it in this day and age we sometimes use a travel agent? 😆

We went into the travel agent and asked if they could search for ski trips with free child places. Nearly impossible to search and actually find free child places online, but the travel agent could do it on their old system (the new web based one they couldn’t!). They managed to find some really good deals.