Guide to Skiing Holiday Companies

The following companies and links all specialise in holiday apartments. In addition to this it's always worth checking out the official tourist websites for resorts as they often provide a list of local self-catering accommodation or availability searches.

The following companies are all specialists in organising summer holidays to mountain regions.

Alpine Elements : www.alpineelements.co.uk

Alpine Elements offer a variety of active holidays, including mountain biking, hill walking, climbing, rafting, canyoning and summer skiing.

Esprit www.esprit-holidays.co.uk

As well as their winter skiing and Lapland holidays, Esprit specialize in family summer trips to the Alps.

Anyone who's spent night after night trawling through ski holiday brochures or visiting site after site on the internet ill know that there are big differences in costs between different ski holiday companies. And the range of options is just phenomenal, sometimes too much, which is why it's a big advantage if you know where you want to go to. If you can limit your choice to one resort then you can spend more time comparing prices with more companies. It's definitely worth that extra time to get as many prices as you can. Remember to look out for the extras that some companies offer - free child places, equipment hire deals, offers on lessons and sometimes even lift passes. Some companies, especially the smaller independent ones, form good links with local resort companies, such as ski schools and ski shops, and such deals can save you more money than the differences in the cost of the flight and accommodation. Now if you've got a good knowledge of the resort you're heading for - maybe you've been before or have been given some reliable information from friends, it can sometimes definitely pay to book the different parts of the holiday yourself rather than getting a package deal. The internet has really opened this up as a great way of saving money on holidays. Booking flights through budget airlines, accommodation through hotel comparison websites or directly with the hotel itself, pre-booking ski hire and lessons directly can all save you money. The only thing you often cant save money one when you do it yourself is the lift pass. However, before you start booking all these things individually remember to total everything up and compare the costs against a package deal, and you need to remember to factor everything in, things like airport transfers and taxes that are often included in the overall price without you really thinking about it. And as we said before package holidays often include good deals on free kid places, equipment hire and lessons.

The following companies are all large tour operators with big weighty brochures and a choice of at least 50 European ski resorts.

Crystal Ski www.crystalski.co.uk

Part of the giant TUI group, Crystal are probably the largest ski holiday operator in the UK.

Inghams www.inghams.co.uk

Ingham's roots date back to the 1930's when Walter Ingham became one of the early British pioneers of the ski holiday. Now part of the Swiss Hotelplan group, Inghams offer a wide range of resorts and accommodation.

Neilson www.neilson.co.uk

A member of the Thomas Cook Group, Neilson has nearly 25 years experience of providing top-end ski holidays in 10 Europen countries.