Anyone who chooses France in preference to Austria needs to think again......discuss.

I have skied in Austria or France for well over 100 weeks and leaving the skiing aside for a moment I am certain that the overall standard of accommodation in Austria far exceeds that of France. In addition, the general character and ambience of a typical Austrian village resort is generally better than a typical French resort. And Austria tends to be cheaper and hence better value for money overall than France.

If we now consider the skiing areas then for sure they both have an excellent selection of areas to suit everybody and I would call them as equal on this.

I think it is fair to say that the amount of skiers/boarders in Germany is much greater than in the UK and they are certainly as enthusiastic about snow sports as we are on this forum. The number one destination for German people is Austria by a country mile, and so I don't understand why we in the UK choose France more often than Austria, albeit that the statistics are relatively close.

So these are my thoughts, I would be interested to hear the opinions of others on this subject.




PS I will be skiing or snowboarding for 14 weeks this season as I am training for ISIA, 2 of those weeks will be in France, 1 week in Italy and the rest in Austria..........which is where I am now. :)

I'm not really qualified to comment as I've not skied in Austria (but hope to one day).

However, I have skied France 4 or 5 times and enjoyed the experience each time.

By the way, there is a specific category on the forum for Austria......

I think your thread would be better titled "Anyone who chooses a whole country in preference to another needs to think again".

Overall and average qualities are completely meaningless, unless you're going to stay everywhere all at once! 8)

There are (relatively) cheap French ski areas and very expensive Austrian ones, and plenty of areas in both countries to suit just about anyone. You'd have to have some pretty bizarre criteria to eliminate every resort from one of the greatest ski countries on Earth.

As for national preferences; geography and language are pretty obviously major influences on both Germans heading for Austria and the Brits heading for France, although a huge number of Brits go to Austria each year anyway.

Each to their own; there are many great places to ski, whatever you're looking for, in both countries.

BTW - The Austrian section of the forum is cunningly indicated by the word Austria in the forum index... -)

Bedrock Barney and Admin, I stand corrected about a separate category on this forum for both France and Austria and so have edited my original post accordingly.

Bedrock Barney, I too enjoy skiing in France, but in my opinion Austria is generally much better and I would thoroughly recommend you give it a try.

Admin, I take your point, so let me clarify a little and say I am comparing the major resorts of France versus the major resorts of Austria as classified by those featuring in most British ski brochures.

Furthy34, shhh please.

I would much rather keep the relatively empty pistes of Austria and the Dolomites to myself. Along with the cheap beer, excellent great value food both on and off the mountains and of course locals who are actually friendly and happy to have tourists in their resorts :)

Just go to Italy......much better

Oh. FFS. I wonder why Germans ski in German-speaking Austria. And from Germany you have to go through Austria to get to the French ski resorts.

Not quite Dobby, it depends on where in Germany you are, but don't forget they have a border with France as well. And tbh the rest of them would be better off going through Switzerland if they wanted to get to France.