booking for a first-time skier
Decide what your clients’ priorities are: learning to ski at an English-speaking school, value for money, children’s ski facilities, mountain ambience, gourmet cuisine, varied apres-ski or sunshine.
Select a resort recomm-ended for beginners: for example, choose somewhere with plenty of green and blue runs.
Decide what type of package would best suit your client: be it self-catering, half-board or full-board. Lunch is normally spent on the mountain so half-board is the most popular option.
Make sure your client stick to their budget: to reduce costs, avoid Christmas, Easter and other school holidays.
Select which ski school options your clients would prefer: is it group or private lessons and how long do they require instruction for each day?
Make it fun: if your clients have kids, make sure there are creches, snow gardens, kids’ clubs, kindergarten and ski schools to cater for their needs.
Advise your clients not to buy ski gear: recommend borrowing ski gear or renting it out.
Advise clients to hire skis and boots in resort: this increases your commission but means your clients can also change them if they are uncomfortable.
Best time to go: February and March are good for beginners as these months offer lots of snow and plenty of sunshine. Late April and May often have poor snow conditions.
Suggest your clients pack the ski essentials: these include ski gloves, sunglasses, goggles, hat and scarf, ski socks, non-slip boots for walking around the resort, sun screen and many thin layers to keep warm.
Source: Ski Andorra, apopular winter sports destination for beginners.
With the travel agent’s livelihood increasingly being challenged by the Internet and other forms of direct-booking facilities, the need to become a specialist in a range of holiday destinations and products has never been greater.
Indeed, with around 700,000 UK skiers, the sport is clearly one travel product in which agents should invest some time and training as it can be extremely profitable.
First Choice Ski reports that the average cost of a ski holiday through travel agents is 10%-15% higher than the average beach holiday. The commission paid is therefore that much higher. Inghams also points out that group bookings are prevalent, making potential earnings even higher.
To encourage agents to learn about the ski market and to boost sales, a number of ski operators have introduced new trade initiatives and incentives. Crystal Holidays recently launched a Travel Agents Ski Bible 2000 – a 30-page guide covering all aspects of how to sell ski holidays – in conjunction with a competition to win free flights on Concorde to encourage agents to study it.
Other mainstream ski operators such as Inghams host training sessions and ski roadshows involving over 1,500 agents, while Thomson organises product training at dry ski slopes around the UK,giving agents a free 1hr lesson on certain dates.
First Choice Ski has given training to 2,000 travel agents in the last 18 months and taken over 500 away on educationals. Training manuals with resort details and ski jargon explanations are available and the call centre in Brighton has doubled the number of staff to assist agents.
First Choice Ski marketing and planning director Adrian Harwood said: “Selling a ski holiday may fill an inexperienced travel agent with dread. Our brochure and manuals are designed to be simple and travel agent friendly, providing detail on every resort featured.
“Most of the holidays can be booked on the First Choice First View viewdata system. The processes are no different from the standard beach holiday processes,” he added.
While experienced skiers may tend to book direct, it is the first-timers who often approach travel agents for help. Many are unsure about where to go, whether to book lessons, what a ski pass is and the pros and cons of buying or hiring ski gear.
Agents booking holidays for first-time skiers for the 2000/2001 season can take advantage of First Choice’s new Total Ski Package. Available in France and Italy, it is designed to be cheap and easy to sell with prices from £299 for one week.
The package includes all the usual components -Êflights, transfers, resort service and full-board accommodation – plus the ski pack consisting of lift pass, six days ski and boot hire and a minimum 2hrs instruction per day.
“It is easy for the agent to sell because it is one package, there are no extras that need to be added on. For the client, nothing more need be spent if so desired,” said Harwood.
Club Med also offers all-inclusive packages with all components such as ski pass and ski school included at all of its 28 ski villages.
Indeed, most operators are keen to stress the ease of booking ski holidays. Neilson Ski marketing manager Adrian Howell said: “Many retail agents consider ski to be too specialist, too complicated and too difficult to understand and therefore avoid actively promoting and selling it as a product.
“But there are three simple steps to selling ski holidays. Read the brochures or view some of the ski Web sitesor videos, contact a tour operator to be included in their training programme and experience it by going on aneducational using a concessionfrom an tour operator or visiting a dry ski slope.”