Crystal End Ski Hosting At All Resorts

The UK's biggest ski holiday operator Crystal has decided to end its ski hosting service at all of its resorts and offer its customers an ever improving digital app guide service instead, which it says its research has found is what its customers actually prefer.

The company surveyed more than 2,300 of its customers in March and found that take up of the once popular ski hosting service had dropped to only 4% whilst it's self-guiding App was being used by 15% of its customers and growing.

The company's Ski Explorer (iOS and Android) app includes recommended ski routes for all levels by our expert resort teams. Customers can independently rate the runs and track how far and fast you ski through the day. The 'My Friends' feature answers that eternal ski resort problem of finding your friends wherever they are on the mountain (or the bars…).

Ski hosting, or social skiing, involves tour operator staff taking clients on orientation tours of easy slopes to introduce them to the ski areas they're visiting. The service has been offered for decades by many tour operators but has proved ever more controversial in some countries, particularly France, where ski schools have claimed tour operator staff do not hold adequate qualification to offer the service. Crystal are currently part of a group of leading tour operators backing tour operator Le Ski in a 'test case' with the French authorities over the legality of the service, currently working its way through the appeals court process.

However in the meantime there have been signs from other countries, including regions in Italy, that they'll follow the French lead.

Crystal say that despite their changing priorities with their own ski hosting service they will continue to support Le Ski in its case.

"Crystal will continue to invest in mobile tools for the winter season 2015-16. Social skiing will no longer be offered, and our expert in-resort teams, who live and breathe the mountains, will continue to help customers get the most out of their time on the slopes," said a statement on behalf of Crystal.

"Our mobile tools will mean they are always on hand to offer tips on where to ski and resort information. For instance, we all know that the hardest choices to make in the morning are how much clothing to take and which slopes are going to have the best conditions. We will be discussing with our in-resort teams how they can best liaise with mountain patrol and ski schools to provide customers with the best morning briefing possible and provide them with valuable updates during the day through the app and even into the après-ski."

www.crystalski.co.uk/skiexplorerapp

I think that is unfortunate. I have only ever used the Crystal service once, and that was in the Jungfrau region, an area that has multiple benefits from using the service. The main area benefit was the good use of local knowledge.

In our group, there were a dozen or so skiers, mainly good intermediate, but with two or three of us more experienced skiers. The group kept up a fair speed. helped each other out, where required. On a couple of runs, the more experienced skiers were directed towards some trickier runs, with meet up places, for the group to catch up.

As one would expect, a good social aspect sprung up.

The standard of skiing/boarding of the Crystal reps was good.

It's illegal in France nonetheless so application seems like a good solution. A well developed app (some resorts actually already provide apps that give all necessary information about conditions and open runs (with ratings and lengths) and installations, weather, avalanche bulletins, on-slopes restaurants, web-cams and even let you locate other skiers on slopes if you register. If these apps don't exist in France, Crystal is doing a good service by developing one. Lot of things these days are done via web, so why not ski-related? It's 2015 after all.

Difficult to have a chat with a phone on the chairlift.........

But much easier in lift lines and after off-loading. Never hurts to make an approximate plan before leaving a chalet too and work from there:) I check first thing the running installations, avy stuff and webcams to get an idea what a day might be like. It works just fine, and I am sure the trend of using apps will catch up with most people very quickly. I heard there would be even Tinder-style app for dating on slopes soon:)

I agree with Andy, chats on the phone whilst be lifted are an accident waiting to happen! I've downloaded the new Crystal app, it looks excellent.

Victory for dedicated ski professionals.

You can always say hello to anyone on the lift :-).

You've lost me. How is skiers relying on an app to guide them around the mountain a victory for dedicated ski professionals?