Book everything separately or a package?

[OhCobblers]

I'm curious to know what you think is better?
We still need ski school for the children and ski hire for 3. Private transfer is so ££££££ but I hate the coach transfer waiting for everyone to get on. We generally go SC apartment and fly rather than drive.

Does it work out much cheaper booking separately (for a family of 4)?

Hello! We book separately, but tend to do that for every holiday so that we can have complete control over every element.

We went in February last year, the week before half term. It broke down roughly as:

£330 flights
£700 accommodation (two bed apartment)
£500 passes
£600 lessons including ski/boot hire
DC had a lesson/hire package at around £150 each and DH and I paid for hire and 3 x 2hr lessons, which was a similar price.
£25 taxes (Austria)
£100 (roughly) per day for food/drinks on the slopes/shopping for the apartment.
Total £2855

We opted to public transport it last year, which was around another £100 on top and this year we're booking a private transfer. We've had several quotes already for around €250.

Naturally flights/accommodation would have been significantly more had we gone February half term.

This year we're booked for Christmas week. Flights were £740 and the apartment (same apartment as last year) was £800. We anticipate the other costs to be similar to last year, allowing for annual increases.

As we go s/c we don't factor our 'big shop' when we arrive into our holiday budget, as that's just part of the normal monthly budget, we'd be buying food at home anyway. The £100 daily allowance is hot chocolate/lunch (sometimes we pack one, sometimes we don't)/beer/strudel etc. Just out and out about expenditure.

We’ve done it both ways; a bit cheaper booking each element separately but we do whatever is needed to get exactly what we want.

For this year we booked a package which was deliberate as it was very likely to get cancelled; we’ve also booked the same for next year so will move the refund over to the balance of next year’s

I think it depends on the ages of the children and what you do when you're there. We're a family of 5 with 3 children, 2 of whom now have to pay adult rate for ski passes / equipment hire. We also eat out every night and most lunches. It still ends up being slightly cheaper than a package but that's the family-of-5 factor; I think if you're a family of 4 and don't want to self cater, I don't think booking separately would make it much cheaper.

I normally always book everything seperately but this time I have used BA for flight and hotel combi so I have a bit more cover in the form of ATOL.
I agree when you book yourself you get so much more choice and control over resorts, timings and durations and type of accommodation and its also always cheaper, but at the moment I am just playing things super safe.
I actually started a business for people putting packages together themselves but its on hold right now because of the current situation. I think a lot of people will be playing it safe with packages in the immediate future although realistically if you for example booked an EasyJet with accommodation from Booking.com and then a transfer through one of the big transfer companies then hire through for example Sport2000 and ski school with ESF i think they would all seperately give you quite a good level of security but it would be a lot of admin!

I just rambled on about this on the other thread. I think it’s safer to book separately these days. Agree you should eventually get money back from abta in most circumstances if they are asking for a four figure balance 8-12 weeks before and the holiday looks unlikely to go ahead it really pains me to pay. Whereas an airline I can get a voucher online and ensure only to book refundable hotels etc. Given this is often also the cheaper solution it makes sense for me.

Sorry that should read “in most circumstances BUT if they are asking for a four figure balance...”