End to ski hosting in France

It is rather like saying all medical receptionists must have a medical degree (which also takes 5 years) before they start the job :shock:

In my opinion someone who has taken 5 years to become a fully qualified ski instructor is vastly over qualified to work as a ski host.

In the end few benefit from pedantic application of laws. Will I pay a host to take me around a resort - no. I may well miss out on a few hidden gems of pistes and mountain restaurants but I'll be damned if I'll pay an instructor that.
I'll read the piste map and talk to my chalet host rather than ski with him/her.

I wonder how much it costs the chalet companies etc. to offer the ski hosting at the moment? An extra £20 per head for the week?

If I was on holiday on my own I think I'd pay up to £10 per day for a ski host, because I hate ski-ing on my own. But I'm not sure if I'd pay this if I was on holiday with friends and family ...

It can be quite useful sometimes ski-ing with someone that knows the resort very well. When we were in our off-piste lesson the Tommeuses lift to take us back to the Tignes ski area shut, and the ESF instructor took us back down to the village of La Daille and onto a free ski bus. Apparently they put one on specially if the Tommeuses lift shuts, but I never would have known that!

AllyG wrote:

SwingBeep wrote:As Ian Wickham mentioned earlier this has been going on for years. There was article about the same issue in The Daily Telegraph on 19th Dec. 2001 shortly after the French ministry of sport enacted the current law http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/4180074/British-ski-guides-hit-French-resistance.html

As the law is pretty clear and the penalties are quite severe (up to 1 year's imprisonment and a fine of up to 15,000 Euros) http://www.legifrance.com/affichCode.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000006547567&idSectionTA=LEGISCTA000006167038&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006071318&dateTexte=20080208 I'm quite surprised that the TOs offered this service at all and got away with offering it for so long.

An extract from the Telegraph article says this:
'Some guides have basic instructor qualifications but, under French law, only holders of the highest of the three BASI (British Association of Snowsport Instructors) grades are entitled to work in France as an instructor. Training for this qualification takes around five years.'

Apparently ski hosting using unqualified guides has been illegal since 2001 (unless they are true 'volunteers'), but for some unknown reason it seems that the French have now decided that 'enough is enough' and they're going to stop it.

So what they are saying is that ski hosts must have BASI level 3 (which apparently takes 5 years of training) in order to work legally on the French ski slopes, even though ski hosts do not instruct.

So ski hosting was always illegal. what is ski hosting then, exactly?

What is the legal definition of ski guiding in the context of this law? Because I suspect when they used the word it was intended to mean off piste guiding and not showing people around using blues and reds.

Does anyone know how many accidents have been caused by ski hosts? I'm assuming there are loads of examples seeing that they have felt the need to ban hosting on safety grounds.

Here's an idea. Ex-Hosts should where bright yellow jackets with "I WORK FOR xyz DO NOT FOLLOW ME" written clearly on the back.

When holiday makers arrive in resort they can be clearly advised in very great detail that "John" will be skiing very fast from the hotel at 9:30am each day, but he is NOT allowed to Host a group. "Janet" will leaving the hotel at 9:30am too, but as she's feeling tired this week she is not skiing quite so fast and so will be going a slightly different route, but she must not host either. In case the guests were wondering, Janet & John are in "luv", so they will being meeting each other at the '123mountain top restaurant' at lunch time, please try not to disturb them.

But no matter how hard they try, what Janet and John can't seem do is stop Guests leaving the hotel at about the same time, nor then stop the guests following them everywhere. They imagine that the French Authorities will accuse them of "hosting", so to ensure that it is very clear that they are not, they will need to wait at every lift, call the stalkers together and in no uncertain terms shout very loudly..."I'M GOING UP THIS LIFT, THEN A,B, C RUNS, you MUST NOT FOLLOW ME".

I think the TO would be making very "reasonable" efforts not to be hosting, but what can you do when a group of people simply keep following you?

-)

tin pot wrote:
So ski hosting was always illegal. what is ski hosting then, exactly?

I'm not sure but I think ski hosting has only been illegal since 2001. It's allowed if the ski host is genuinely working as an unpaid volunteer - like for a ski club, or they are a fully qualified ski instructor.

I don't think there is a definition of a ski host. But what they do is to ski/snowboard around the ski area with their guests/clients and show them where the best pistes, lifts and restaurants etc. are. They are not allowed to instruct their guests/clients.

The French government doesn't seem to recognise that a ski host is not just an unqualified ski instructor. I suppose it's because in France ski hosting is not an official occupation.

andyhull wrote:

Does anyone know how many accidents have been caused by ski hosts? I'm assuming there are loads of examples seeing that they have felt the need to ban hosting on safety grounds.

I would like to know this as well, Andy :)
But I should imagine that ski hosts haven't caused any accidents because otherwise the ESF/ski instructors union/French government would have said something about that by now.

On our group ski holiday, Felthorpe got slightly hurt by falling under that fence when ski-ing with some of our group. I hurt my arm slightly by getting buried in deep snow during our off-piste lesson, and Joe and Daved got hurt slightly as well when they fell during the off-piste lesson. But I don't think anyone got hurt when we were ski-ing with the chalet ski hosts.

In my experience ESF instructors tend to push you, so that you ski out of your comfort zone. They often make you try new things/methods of ski-ing, and hence I reckon you're more likely to hurt yourself in an ESF lesson than when ski-ing either on your own or with a ski host.