Can’t stand long lift queues?

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.

Click this link to view the 2017/18 provisional European school holiday calendar and plan your stay to avoid the weeks when lots of countries are on winter holidays at once.  You’ll appreciate shorter lift queues and quieter pistes if you can manage to visit when nobody’s on holidays at all!

During winter 2017/18, the busiest periods will be :

• Christmas & New Year holidays  23/12/17-05/01/18  (all European schools on holiday)
• Winter half term holidays  – 10/02/18-02/03/18 (France, UK, Belgium, Luxemburg, Netherlands)

If you have any choice, we do recommend holidaying outside of these dates, as French ski resorts will be particularly busy.

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 ***when zone C is on holiday, French ski resorts become exceptionally busy***