Claim for refund on ski-passes when resort closed

[cloughie100]

Hi
Anyone else trying to claim refund on lift passes and rental for days when there was too much snow? We were in Espace Killy last week and pistes were closed for approx 2.5 days so for 5 people that's a lot of wasted money ! -now trying to get refund but tricky

Travel insurance?

Insurance should include piste closure

Our upgraded travel insurance which now includes winter sports would cover this but I don't know what evidence they would need,

As a school taking 36 pupils to the USA in February, I made sure that the insurance we took out included piste closures. Check the small print of your insurance.

Insurance usually covers. The resorts we've been to (Swiss and French alps) offer alternatives when pistes are closed such as free ice-skating, cinema, bowling. Not ideal but what can they do. Also in one place we were offered free transport and entry to indoor skiing for the day; it was in France but I don't remember where. They did mention it when we booked though.

But yes your insurance would be the place to turn for compensation.

Shouldn’t the resort be the ones doing the refunding in this instance?

The resort cannot control nor promise snow. That's what insurance is for.

In Austria now, we didn’t get up on Wednesday because the lifts were closed but did reopen later and it’s not looking promising just now. Hopefully it will change in the next hour or so. Your insurance should cover it.

Just a tip for those saying their insurance covers piste closure - check the small print!

Quite often the heading is that you’re covered for piste closure but when you read the detail it goes on to say ‘due to lack of snow’ which means claims for too much snow or other weather conditions are often denied.

There will also be caveats on how many % of lifts actually closed before you can claim

I would imagine the reasoning is that if there is too little snow the resorts can use cannons etc to keep a certain percentage of runs open, meaning the insurance won’t have to pay. However in the case of too much snow, or high winds for example, the resorts are limited to what they can do hence the insurance companies exclude as they can’t get round them...

Insurance companies are gits for this kind of thing, the devil really is in the detail

Not sure if you got sorted but we claimed for piste closures years ago when in Andorra. We went to the ticket office at the base of the slopes and collected a letter for proof of closure (we may have also collected a letter from ski school too). When we returned home we attached this to the claim form and hey pesto we were refunded for xdays lift pass, hire and lessons.

I think we had insurance with the post office or M&S at the time. Definitely check your small print and make sure you collect all evidence in resort at the time to save the hassle when back home. Good luck!