3 hours Ago
Higher Bills, Same Choices
Last winter, travelers who booked through Summit Travel spent an average of 984 euros per person. That covered lodging, a lift pass, equipment rental and lessons. In the 2021-2022 season, the same package averaged 741 euros. The rise lines up with the climb in accommodation prices, which suggests skiers are staying in the same kind of hotels and apartments as before. They simply pay more for them.
Put another way, a ski holiday has become roughly one and a half times more expensive than everyday living costs in the Netherlands. Over the same four years, overall prices rose by around 22 percent, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Across Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France, the average total trip price went up by a similar margin, somewhere between 30 and 33 percent.
The steady increases pushed the company to check whether customers were changing their habits. "When prices rose sharply, we wondered whether winter-sports travelers would drop out. Fortunately, that proved not to be the case," said Robert Flik, founder of Summit Travel. He added that the team also expected shorter stays or cheaper lodging, but saw no sign of either.
Loyalty to the Week in the Snow
Flik believes the answer lies in how much people love these trips. For many, he explained, the week in the snow is a fixed point in the year, and they are not ready to let it go.
Figures from Statistik Austria back up the picture. Preliminary numbers show Dutch visitors made nearly seven million overnight stays in Austria last winter, two percent more than the winter before.
There is some relief on the horizon, too. Early price lists for 2026-2027 show accommodation rates about 2.5 percent higher than a year earlier. That is the smallest increase since the comparison began, so price growth looks to be easing.
