What happens at Ski Famille over the Summer?

Last Updated 2nd October 2018 at 11:48 am

As a tour operator who only runs family skiing holidays from December through to April, one of the most common questions we get asked is “so what exactly do you do over the Summer months?”

We would love to answer with “sitting in deckchairs revelling in some kind of six month long “Pimms o’clock”, but sadly this isn’t true.

Believe it or not, if this Summer is anything to go by, our UK office can be just as busy as periods during the winter!

So now onto the nitty-gritty!

Recruitment

With about 100 overseas staff in all four of our resorts, summer is a busy time for our recruitment team to find and take on the very best nannies, chefs, hosts and managers for the season ahead. Of course, many of our staff choose to stay on and work many more seasons however as you can imagine, it is inevitable that some will move on to university, full-time work or other commitments. From April onwards, our priority involves finding and recruiting qualified, passionate and friendly staff who know how to turn your family holiday in the mountains into a special one.

The recruitment team go further than simply interviewing potential staff. Their busy summer is also spent building relationships with feeder schools including cookery schools, colleges and universities. It is at these colleges, specialist childcare colleges and universities where we find many of our nannies as well as other positions. Similarly, many of the cookery schools we partner with (such as Tante Marie, Leiths, Cambridge Cookery School and The Avenue Cookery School) have developed some of our best chefs to date. Their in-depth chalet chef cooking lessons give our catering team all of the skills and confidence they need to serve delicious food for you in the mountains.

Once Recruitment has built up a ‘100-strong team’, our efforts move to offering comprehensive training. Both old and new staff spend several days together building on their knowledge of their own roles; from safeguarding children for those involved in childcare to table presentation and service for our catering team.

Recruitment is kept busy with administrative tasks too, from arranging staff accommodation to the coordination of staff paperwork and official documents.

Early Bookers

For most families, time is a premium. Finding a week where the children are off school and mummy and daddy have no commitments can be tough. For this reason, we often see many of our guests booking over the summer months. Once we have moved into Autumn, many of our chalets tend to be fully occupied on ‘peak weeks’ and are close to being fully booked on other weeks too.

Despite the warm weather, this summer has been incredibly busy and has seen our sales team working as hard as ever. The number of summer bookings is significantly higher than in previous seasons with the office phones virtually ringing off the hook! Our small but friendly sales team will ensure your family is put into the best room, resort and chalet based on your the size of your group, ages of your children, likes, dislikes and any other requirements you might have.

Improvements & Refurbishments

Here at Ski Famille we are always searching for ways to improve, adapt and fine-tune our overall holiday package. The Summer months are spent evaluating all elements from the previous season (based on the invaluable feedback from our guests). With this information, we can then find ways to continually improve the Ski Famille experience. This can be in the form of assessing our current properties and how we can improve them further, or it may involve searching for potential new chalets in the right locations that would work for families.

Already this season we have:

• A new Les Gets chalet – Chalet Monet
• A new outdoor terrace with hot tub in Chalet Marjorie
• A new roof top sauna in Chalet Grand Mouflon and Chalet Petit Mouflon
• A new hot tub with stunning views in Chalet Katie 2
• A hot tub moved out on to the terrace in Chalet Eva
• New private transfer options

Marketing

Of course, all of these exciting improvements to the Ski Famille experience need to be shared and that’s where our marketing comes in. Blogs are written, newsletters with exciting news are shared and long-term summer projects take place. With time on our side over the summer, it is a crucial period to plan and complete larger-scale and exciting projects. This summer, in particular, you can expect:

• A website redesign; bringing you a neater, crisper look that is not only much clearer but also easier to navigate.
• An exciting new app for those who have booked a family skiing holiday with us in 2018/19. The app will bring all of the information you need for your holiday into one accessible place. Not only this but the information (such as chalet door codes, wifi codes, meal times etc) will be presented in a more engaging way.

Our summer is also spent building relationships with family-based magazines (such as Family Traveller), running exciting competitions and keeping you in the loop on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels.

For any further information, call our friendly team on 01252 365 495 or email us at holidays@skifamille.co.uk