Ski trip cost- are we subsidizing “host “ family

If there are eight going, why are they booking a seven seater?

Just send a friendly but clear response.

Thanks for this. It's a bit more than we expected and we are a bit confused by the numbers - are we covering something else in this cost? Car hire? Food? Something else we hadn't considered? Thanks.

Maybe they’re including part of the car hire, as presumably they wouldn’t be hiring one if it was just their children going. They should make it clear anyway.

Ski holidays are very expensive, but this seems outrageous.

OP has already stated (in her first post) that the OP is covering flights etc. She also states that her child has a card to pay for lunches and incidentals.

If we're talking about charging OP for loo rolls, then these hosts should not be hosting at all.

We wouldn't dream of charging friends' children to join our holiday; flights yes, but nothing else. Certainly not loo roll and firewood.

" I asked for the breakdown( we were only given total figure)"

It's in the OP.

Why have you not just asked for a breakdown of costs? There are so many unanswered questions in the info you’ve shared here it’s hard to tell if the price is unreasonable or not.

We don’t even know where in the world this is - I’ve just done 2 days skiing in the Rockies, with accommodation in a log cabin for 2, and frankly there was not much change from £1000 each even without flights. But for the same money in Europe, you could get a long weekend in shared accommodation quite nicely. Lift passes in some resorts in the States come in at £200+ per day easily. In Europe, you’d be hard pushed to find a resort charging more than £50 per day. I know this because DH and I spent plenty of time in the States goggling over the difference in prices.

Your list of what is included has not mentioned travel costs (other than the 7 seater car for 8 - how is this going to work?) Who is paying for flights, fuel, road tolls, parking costs? How are meals being provided? What about household essentials if it’s a self catering chalet - loo roll, soft drinks, firewood, etc?

You need a proper breakdown of costs, and you can only get that by asking the hosts, because no one on MN has the full picture. Personally, I would be properly pissed off if I’d offered to take your child away as part of my family and rather than getting together to discuss costs like grown ups I find out you’ve decided the host is unreasonable and posted it on a public forum without even asking.

I regularly share a holiday with another family. We share a 3 bed lodge; DS and I share a room. We pay one third of the lodge, plus our share of the initial food shop. We split expenditure after that. It all works out fine.

What's happened here is that the 'host' family seem to be subsidising their costs to the tune of several hundreds per extra child. Given there are 4 extra kids, they're pretty much getting their holiday funded.

OK here's a thought...

£4000 / 3 = £1333
add £300 = £1633 which rounds up to £1640.

Do you think they've just had a maths failure and divided the accommodation cost by the number of rooms rather than the number of guests?

Because nobody likes being ripped off.

If either family was really wealthy they'd being going for a week in a hotel, not cutting costs by.reducing time and self caterung.

If it turns out they are trying to get you to subsidise them, omg I’d be absolutely furious, especially if I’d funded their kids previously at my own expense!

Do the four days include travel time? That will be nigh on £500 per day, and the weather / level of snow cover will be entirely uncertain!

Can you say 'would you mind sending a breakdoen of costs, we didnt think it would be this much and want to ask DC to contribute from their savings as we budgeted a bit less and want to see which bits they can pay for?'

Just as a general observation, I do think sharing trips often throws up problems.

It's a nice idea - and works well in books and movies - but without a semi-objective organiser who is not themselves invested in the trip (eg a teacher who is paid to supervise/organise) problems do tend to arise quite frequently.

Yes, I've just caught that update about 4 days and 3 in a room. I was thinking it was a week with two to a room.

Maybe they're rich enough to afford a ski holiday because they are careful with their money?

Maybe the host family are rich enough to afford a skiing holiday because they're happy to accept the generosity of their own DC being offered free holidays but are then rinsing multiple friends for excessive costs when they return the favour?

Whhhhat? Just because someone's not struggling doesnt mean they should susidise someone else's ski holiday! Thats madness!

Lots of people who go skiing don't have megabucks - me, for example. I'd definitely be splitting hairs over 'a few hundred pounds'!

The host family are using these kids to subsidise their own trip so none of them particularly sounds like the sort of privileged types who think nothing of dropping 0000s on a four-day trip to Aspen.

Definitely ask for a breakdown from them. I feel like they're absolutely taking the piss here. Would your son be really upset if you just said its too much at this stage? What a weird shitty thing for them to do!

How are they going to all fit in a seven seater? Seems ridiculous for four days even the liftpass cost.

Genuine question, if you are presumably rich enough to be sending kids on a ski holiday, why split hairs over a few hundred pounds?

If the host family are also wealthy, they probably tacked on a buffer assuming the parents of the kids won't mind. If you become "that family" who starts requesting itemised breakdowns of the budget, and then challenging it, then it's pretty unlikely your children will be invited to any future trips.

Op just read that update. How commited are you to this, ie is it too late to pull the plug?

They'd have needed a 2 bedroom place for just their family.

Im all for the children's families paying their way but they shouldnt be providing a cheap upgrade for the host family. If theyre asking more than £500 for accommodation and £300 ski pass there should be an explanation as to what moneys for

More fool they to be honest!! I can't think of much worse!

That aside, it does seem wrongly calculated on the figures given.

At the same time, the overall cost asked for didn't make my hair stand on end. 800 "all in" would be surprisingly cheap for one person. The missing bit seems to me to be food costs, ski hire, transport etc. However, as you say these are (yet to be) covered individually, then yes, the cost asked for should be 4000 divided by 8 plus 300.

To me it seems as though there may be some confusion around the extra food etc costs. Have they included an estimate? Presumably if it is self-catering, they will want a portion of that paid to them to provide the food?

Yes this is too expensive - has to be St Moritz perhaps?! You will probably get another bill when they get home too!!

Effectively, they’ve divided the accommodation by 5; treating their family unit as one person, plus the 4 additional guests. Given that their family unit is spread across 2 rooms, that’s not on. Even then, adding 300 to the 1/5th room cost still only adds up to 1.1k. So they’re adding on an extra 500 for what they deem to be additional costs, like car hire, breakfast and dinner.