Tour operators and ski resorts are reporting heavy booking for the Christmas holiday week for the coming ski season.
The news comes a year after tour operators were offering substantial discounts and reporting low sales for Christmas 2017 after three previous successive years when most of Europe had had a warm dry start to the season and some believed this was the start of a trend.
However Christmas 2017 turned out to be very snowy, rapidly followed by one of the snowiest Januarys in recent history at the start of this year in the Western Alps.
Some tour operators are saying its more than just last season's snow though,
said Jane Bolton, MD of Erna Low Holidays, the longest established ski holiday company which specialises in high—value self-drive holidays to the Alps, and believes this is another factor in the current boom in Christmas sales."Easter is quite late in 2019 and the Eurostar direct service is stopping the week before the main Easter week,"
Jane reports their sales are about 80% up for the Xmas/New Year period compared to this time last year.
New Year has traditionally been one of the busiest (and this most expensive) weeks of the ski season, along with the main February half term week, but this year, so far, Christmas sales seem to be matching it and unusually in some cases Christmas availability is lower and prices higher, compared to New Year.