Sponsored content
There are a ton of decisions to make when booking a ski holiday, from where and when to go, to how to get there. To make things more confusing, many of these questions have no right or wrong answer.
If you’re a family, looking for a kid-friendly resort, the best destination will obviously be different to if you’re a hard-charging group of mates looking to ride deep, steep powder. Similarly, if you’re booking a short break, flying (and going to a resort close to Geneva) might be your best option. Whereas if you’re going for a week, you may prefer to travel by train.
"Sunweb carries around 380,000 European holidaymakers to the slopes each winter—over 40,000 of them Brits"
One of the most fundamental queries to get nailed down early on is whether it’s best to book via a tour operator—a company that sells package deals, usually including flights, accommodation and transfers—or to book each element independently yourself.
Again, there’s no hard and fast answer to this. But in order to help you make an informed decision, we spoke to Martijn van Eijl, from the tour operator Sunweb. Based in the Netherlands, the company carries around 380,000 European holidaymakers to the slopes each winter—over 40,000 of them Brits. This makes them the largest tour operator on the continent. So if anyone is well placed to explain the pros and cons of tour operator bookings, it’s them.
The Pros of Booking with a Tour Operator
The main advantage of booking your ski holiday with a tour operator is, of course, convenience. Having a one-stop shop for accommodation, liftpasses, flights and transfers can save you hours of time researching. All Sunweb’s packages include a liftpass as standard—saving you time even if you prefer to book your own travel. “A lot of tour operators don’t do that, but we do,” van Eijl says.
There are other benefits too. A one-stop shop when booking means there’s also a one-stop shop if something goes wrong—a last-minute cancellation, or an unexpected injury meaning you have to cut your trip short. Van Eijl cites the example of a lost lift pass. “You know if something goes wrong, you have to contact the office and maybe they don’t speak English… One thing I think we do really well is we offer great support for anyone who's on a holiday. If there's something wrong, then just contact us and we'll figure it out,” he says.
The added convenience of having a single company responsible for your holiday even offers a level of protection against an unforseen lack of snow. Sunweb offers an exchange guarantee on their holidays, meaning you can exchange your holiday for a similar package up to six weeks before departure—or up to two weeks for an extra fee.
Because Sunweb operates at scale, booking hundreds of thousands of hotel beds and liftpasses each winter, they can also offer cost savings. They offer a lowest price guarantee on all their packages—“If you can book it cheaper with another tour operator, then we match the lower price and we give you a £100 voucher for your next holiday,” van Eijl says.
The Cons of Booking with a Tour Operator
Of course, as a general rule, taking the time to book individual holiday elements on their own will work out cheaper—especially if you bypass platforms like Booking.com, and book with hotels directly.
Tour operators also can’t offer the same level of personalised flexibility as booking each element of your holiday yourself. Although Sunweb are one of the more flexible—allowing you to choose to add transfers, or flights, as you wish to the basic accommodation and liftpass package.
"I think our site is probably the most transparent and the easiest to use,” van Eijl says. “If you see £600, you know that the liftpass is included. And if you filter for example, for flights, you then also have a package where the flight is included, and so on.” This helps address another common criticism of tour operator bookings—that there’s a lack of transparency about what you’re paying for.
The Pros of Booking Independently
By contrast, if you book your ski holiday independently, you know exactly how much you’re spending on each element, and have complete freedom to choose how you slot various things together.
Booking independently also offers you a chance to branch out from the destinations offered by tour operators, should you wish. To explore smaller, off-the-beaten track resorts. It’s no surprise that people who book with Sunweb are “mostly families,” according to van Eijl. “A hardcore skier who wants to ski in, I don’t know, Iran or Japan or something, they don’t bother booking with us,” he says.
This freedom is great—as long as you know what you’re looking for, and can spend the time to do the research.
The Cons of Booking Independently
But of course, the sheer amount of time this takes is one of the biggest disadvantages of booking a ski holiday independently. Other downsides include a lack of consumer protection. If, for example, your airline cancels your flight, you won’t necessarily get a refund on your transfers or your hotel if you’ve booked them separately.
When it comes to price, the reality is that if you’re looking for a fairly standard ski holiday —visiting a major resort like La Plagne or Tignes that offers something for everyone, for a week—then major tour operators like Sunweb will be able to get you a deal that’s as good, if not better, than you could find yourself. Economies of scale and their years of cumulative experience work in their favour. “We have really good contacts in France in, in the Alps so that we can get a good price on liftpasses, get a good price on the accommodation, and all of that,” says van Eijl.
Conclusion
As we said at the start, there’s no right or wrong answer to the question of booking with a tour operator, or booking independently. But if we had to recommend a rule of thumb, it would be this: If you’re an experienced skier with time on your hands, and you have a specific set of wishes about where you want to go, when, then book independently.
If, by contrast, you’re looking for a well-run trip to a major resort, especially in the school holidays, and convenience and consumer protection are important to you, you may well be better off—both financially and in terms of time—by booking with a tour operator. And if you're looking to tap into those tour operator advantages, then it makes sense to book with the biggest in Europe: Sunweb.
This article was created in collaboration with Sunweb.
