Avoid booking your next ski break in the midst of busy school holidays. If you’ve ever unwittingly booking a ski getaway only to realise that your visit falls during a school holiday period, you’ll understand the benefit of a bit of prior research.

Use the European School Holiday Calendar below to plan your stay to avoid the weeks when lots of countries are on winter holidays at once. If you can manage to visit when nobody’s on holidays at all, you’ll benefit from shorter lift queues and quieter pistes!

During winter 2022/23, the busiest periods will be :

Christmas/New Year 17/12/22 – 02/01/23 (all European schools on holiday)
Winter half term 04/02/23 – 03/03/23 (France zones ABC, Great Britain, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, etc)
We expect the busiest February week here in the Haute Savoie to be the week starting 11/02, when France zones A&B, most UK schools, are on holiday simultaneously. With Parisian region schools, Netherlands and Belgium on holiday, the weeks of 18/02 and 25/02 are also likely to be busy.

If you have any choice, we do recommend holidaying outside of these dates.

NB – French holidays are planned each year according to zones, in order that different parts of the country are on holidays at different times. The country is split into 3 zones that holiday at different times.

French zone A – all schools from Caen, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lyon, Montpellier, Nancy-Metz, Nantes, Rennes and Toulouse
French zone B – all schools from Aix-Marseille, Amiens, Besançon, Dijon, Lille, Limoges, Nice, Orléans-Tours, Poitiers, Reims, Rouen and Strasbourg
French zone C – Bordeaux, Créteil, Paris and Versailles
Let us know your thoughts, or contact us now to make an enquiry.