Snowmass Baby! Booking Your Ski Vacation Tips

Over the last three weeks my wife and I have really researched the hell out of this years ski vacation and we have finally booked our ski trip at Snowmass. While I think we got a great value in an awesome 8 night (6 ski days) with ski rentals and a ski in ski out we spent a ton of time and energy weeding through various travel sites, resort sites and speaking with travel agents on the phone. This post was created to help any other skier or traveler that is planning on booking a vacation soon to any major resort in the U.S. or Canada.

The internet offers a wealth of information for travelers – their is no question to that, however it can also be overwhelming with so many great travel sites like expedia, travelocity, priceline, ski.com and many others. Travelers can also book their ski trips through the resort they are planning on skiing at, visit any major resort like Steamboat, Aspen, Snowmass, Vail, Beaver Creek, Whistler or Keystone and you can always find a “plan your vacation” link or travel box right on their homepage.

Tip #1.
Don’t book your vacation via the resort websites, you’ll spend more and that’s a given. At one point in our search for the perfect ski week my wife and I got two quotes on basically the same vacation (same flight, dates, hotel, ski lifts, ski rentals) one from the Steamboat Resort website and another from travelocity. The quote from the folks at Steamboat came in at over $5,600 (ugh) while the quote from travelocity came in just over $4,200.00 A savings of over $1400!

Tip #2.
Ski.com offers custom package deal as well as various “specials”, now if your looking for an entire ski vacation and need flight, ski rentals, ski passes, lodging and transfers you can save yourself a ton of time and energy by booking with Ski.com

I will tell you right now that our trip WAS NOT booked through ski.com, and we thought we were going to be saving more than we actually did. We put a vacation together at Snowmass, with flights, transfers, rentals and ski passes and got a quote from ski.com that was about $250 to $300 more than what we paid booking things separately. Our trip came in at about $4100 and the ski.com quote was for just over $4,400.00

Yes, you will spend a bit more at ski.com however if you have never been to a certain resort they can help you with the best places to stay, information about the mountain and help with special promotions which in some cases can save you more than booking the trip yourself.

Tip#3 – Ski Weekends
If you have decided to get away days before leaving, maybe just for a long weekend getaway your best bet is to look for “last minute ski deals”. Often times some of the travel sites like expedia or travelocity offer these last minute deals on hotel rooms that are not booked. This is an excellent way to get a great value on a fun ski weekend.

Tags: Aspen, Snowmass, Skiing, Travel, Ski Trips

Posted in Aspen Ski Area Resorts