Club med skiing

[NCTDN]

Anyone used them? There seem to be some good prices considering everything is included.

@NCTDN full AI is quite rare. Full board and wine with dinner isn’t though, possibly no lunch, but certainly half board with cake etc is quite normal.

I will say the AI element is great. I also think Cervinia is a great learner resort as there are lots of easy blues. It’s excellent for late season, but a bit prone to wind. Zermatt is just fantastic for skiing and the infrastructure is great too

Done Club Med twice, Cervina and Pragaletto. I'd echo comments above, food is good and they make it easy. Love AI skiing!
But it's a French company with French style expectations that the kids will be more independent that mine turned out to be. Lessons for the kids were not great, they also lost my DD (aged 11) up the mountain twice. She refuses to go back to a lesson again without me or DH.
DS was younger and better taken care of on the slopes, but he wandered off one lunchtime and was totally lost for about 3hours. Noone went looking for him when he didn't show up for ski school after lunch and he wasn't signed out. We complained and it was brushed off by the local management and the UK office.

I’ve done Club Med Avoriaz.

Wouldn’t do it again.

Better suited to families as everything is all in.

Downsides for me:

• accommodation basic
• Because it’s all inclusive everyone wants to rush back to the ‘free’ bar rather than enjoying the piste or village apres.
• Lessons were rubbish - basically consisted of following a ski instructor with limited English around
• Oh and the whole hotel got food poisoning / cane down with a vomiting bug the week I was there! And club med wouldn’t take any responsibility

We have skied for many years with Club Med and every year we swear it will be our last. However the AI swings us each year (although every year the prices have gone up and the quality/service gone down so they are very close to reaching a tipping point for us. Things we like:

• all day included ski lessons - so each of us can get maximum skiing at our own level (particularly dh who can go off piste all week with his group which really doesn't appeal to me now and past a certain level the ski instructor is there to make sure you get maximum skiing (ski school queue and making the most of the ski area covering a lot of ground)
• all inclusive food (although quality goes down every year and the children seem to each junk all week)
• we like the ESF lessons for the children - they learn to ski properly but it is hard-core French approach which is not really suited to English kids who aren't at a do-or-die French school

A much longer list of stuff we don't like:

• number of times at least one child has got sever d&v from the buffet (messing up my or dh's holiday for a few days)
• when the kids were younger - the negligence of the kids club (i.e. losing my dd2 twice in one week and not realising until they couldn't produce her at pick up and then not really helping in the search to find her in a huge hotel)
• mass tourism - loads of people crammed into small rooms and inadequate space in the communal areas so no nice "apres ski" time
• communal areas are so loud in the evening and crazy organised French discos/shows etc
• we never rent Club Med skis - they are pretty rubbish and about 25-50% cheaper to rent in village (with much more choice)
• ridiculous wasted first half day queuing to sign up for lessons etc etc (total stress and absolutely unnecessary)
• if I had more time I could probably find 100s more negatives and whilst we use Club Med I would never, ever recommend it to a friend because that would be taking too much of a chance of ruining their holiday/I am pretty confident most of my friends would hate it . That said it could work in a large mixed ability group - all inclusive would mean avoiding bad surprises when the alcohol bill comes at the end of the holiday, everyone can eat together but get lots of skiing in.