If you are flexible about when you take a ski holiday; you want value for money and don't mind where you go providing there is plenty of snow, this is my suggested plan.
- pack your bags 1st January;
- subscribe to Snow Forecast Website, £10 for 3 months (last year), they can provide good 6 day forecasts for anywhwere in the world and their regional summaries are excellent;
- watch the snow trend daily but on Monday in particular;
- when there is buckets of snow forecast go to the on-line agencies (Neilson, Crystal, Inghams, Iglu etc) and look for their late deals or 'square deals' in your chosen area;
- book on Tuesday the best have gone by Wednesday;
- many of the low resorts in Austria are wonderful when there is loads of snow;
- avoid the school holidays;
- look for the higher altitude resorts as the season gets past Easter;
- the bigger agencies operate a clearing system so they can tell you the airport you will go to and accommodation is allocated on arrival.
We have had three excellent value for money holidays using this method.
Many of Are's blue runs go through subways under the black runs - no more stopping to look up hill for the 'airbourne' - you can just cruise on through.
We flew to Oustrund from Gatwick with Nielson - I think they are going from Heathrow this season - I believe Sweden is a fairly new ski destination by air but I understand Brits have long been visiting Are by an excellent sleeper train from Stockholm.
Send your feedback or queries to been.there@guardian.co.uk
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