J2Ski Holiday 11th January 2015 Sauze d'Oulx

I think the last room in the Sauze hotel has been booked by someone not from J2Ski :(
I looked on the Crystal website just now and they had no rooms available for the Sauze hotel on the 11th January.

Oh well. We've got 28 people booked onto this J2Ski group holiday now, including 22 people booked into 12 rooms as a direct booking with the hotel, and 6 people booked into 3 rooms with Crystal.

We have also booked our group private taxi transfer between Turin and the hotel for those on the direct booking, and our ski hire, so I know how much the holiday is costing us although it varies from person to person because it's a DIY holiday.

BA return flights Gatwick to Turin = £100 (if booked early, it costs a lot more than that now)
Mini-bus return taxi transfer Turin to the hotel = 49 euros
Shared twin or double hotel room including 6 day area lift pass = 480 euros
Advanced skis = 72 euros
boots = 21 euros
Ski lessons for 6 days, 3 hours per day = 130 euros.

The total for flights, transfer, hotel, lift pass, and advanced ski hire booked direct = £580 (using 1.25 euros per pound).

Going with Crystal was more expensive, but their prices came down, whereas the price of going direct went up because the price of the BA flights increased.
Crystal prices started at £525 for the flights, transfers and the hotel, and they finished at £419, but they had a 2 for 1 offer on ski hire which appeared and disappeared at intervals ...
Their lift pass price seemed to start at £161 and finished at £170.
And their ski hire prices were £50 for standard skis, £90 for advanced skis, and £29 for boots.

So, if you booked with Crystal at the beginning and got half price ski hire, it cost you £731 for the package holiday including advanced skis and lift pass.

But if you booked with Crystal at the end it cost you £589 for the package holiday plus lift pass but ski hire would have been extra (I don't know if they had the 2 for 1 offer on at the end).

And, had we been able to get extra rooms, the DIY price would have gone up by £80 because that's how much the BA flights went up by. But at least with BA you can take 2 items of hand luggage and include your skis/board/boots for free if they're within your luggage allowance of 23 Kg.

It looks like they've got some snow in Sauze now :)
Here's a webcam photo from today.

Update on the snow in Sauze ...

Here are some lucky skiers ....

Looking good http://www.sauzeonline.com/sauze-doulx-webcam/ I'm off that way the following week

Ian Wickham wrote:
Update on the snow in Sauze ...

I remember sitting outside that place and spotting myself on the webcam

Have you noticed that the webcam I posted on the 25th has updated its self .... Clever peps these Italians :D

Make sure you get over to Sestriere for the downhill course. Theres a real steep drag up to the top.