Anyone organising a group?

AllyG wrote:

AllyG wrote:I think the first thing to do would be to find out how many J2Skiers would like a group holiday together.

I had a go just now with Survey Monkey to design a simple survey to answer these sort of questions. I don't want you to actually do the survey but just to look at the questions and suggest things like other resorts and other questions we need to ask etc. I haven't thought much about the resorts - I just put down the first ones that came into my head because this is only a prototype survey. It seems that I can make a survey with 10 questions for nothing.

I added the last question just to make it 10. I expect someone could think of a more useful question.

I have no idea how I get hold of the answers yet - but presumably it tells you that somewhere on the survey Monkey website :lol:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KR8Y7CZ

I thought I'd repeat this as I wrote it several pages ago. I'm still looking for helpful comments to improve the survey before we actually start using it. It's a big pity that our resident marketing man seems to be off duty tonight :wink:

I will be alive again Sunday or Monday night. Off to find some more shiraz now :)

Thanks Icy,
Well, so far it looks like we're off to Chamonix in March next year :D

AllyG wrote:I wasn't really planning on people actually doing the survey until after we'd discussed the questions to see if they needed improving, but I managed to work out how to get the results, and I've just been looking at them and 5 people have voted already - thanks everyone :D

5 people have voted so far on the 10 questions :D

5/5 said they would like to go on a J2Ski group ski holiday.

1 person voted to go during school holidays, 4 people voted no to this.

The greatest number of votes was for Chamonix.

2/3 wanted S/C, 3/5 hotel, 3/5 catered chalet (obviously multiple selection going on here - didn't know the site did that.)

Self-drive 1/5, train 2/5, fly 4/5.

Favourite month - March 5/5

4 people with one person in their family group, 1 with two people.

Cost brackets for accommodation and transfers (not flights etc. - did you all realize this?)

£400 - £600 = 1
£600 - £800 = 3
£800 - £1000 = 1

4 intermediate skiers, 1 advanced

2 don't need to hire anything, 3 need skis

Too many variables.

Pick a date, pick a resort, then let people book.

my money is on it never happening still.

Tony_H wrote:

AllyG wrote:I wasn't really planning on people actually doing the survey until after we'd discussed the questions to see if they needed improving, but I managed to work out how to get the results, and I've just been looking at them and 5 people have voted already - thanks everyone :D

5 people have voted so far on the 10 questions :D

5/5 said they would like to go on a J2Ski group ski holiday.

1 person voted to go during school holidays, 4 people voted no to this.

The greatest number of votes was for Chamonix.

2/3 wanted S/C, 3/5 hotel, 3/5 catered chalet (obviously multiple selection going on here - didn't know the site did that.)

Self-drive 1/5, train 2/5, fly 4/5.

Favourite month - March 5/5

4 people with one person in their family group, 1 with two people.

Cost brackets for accommodation and transfers (not flights etc. - did you all realize this?)

£400 - £600 = 1
£600 - £800 = 3
£800 - £1000 = 1

4 intermediate skiers, 1 advanced

2 don't need to hire anything, 3 need skis

Too many variables.

Pick a date, pick a resort, then let people book.

my money is on it never happening still.

I think I will agree with that one

Ian Wickham wrote:In the Hotel in St Christoph there was a group who wore group T-shirts, I have never seen anything as sad, they had printed on them all the ski resorts they had skied ...... that is mega sad 8)

There was something as sad, and it was you, you grumpy git. ) ) :D :D

AllyG wrote:Thanks Icy,
Well, so far it looks like we're off to Chamonix in March next year :D

I'm up for Cham

Hi, I'm new to this forum (and I guess I also feel a bit off posting here: as an outsider, since I live in the US).

I subscribed to the j2ski emails last year for the snow reports. Don't even remember how the heck I got to find it, but anyway, fact is that I signed up, selecting my local Northeast/US areas, and kept getting the weekly reports steadily landing in my emailbox, letting me know once in while that --hooray!-- we have a whopping 1-2" of new snow somewhere in Vermont or NH, while reading further down the message how much better conditions were on the European slopes...

Then, I realized only a few days ago that j2ski also has this forum!! ...which BTW: resulted in quite a few long hours spent browsing randomly through your old threads... really enjoyed reading all the ski-talk, sprinkled here and there with witty, fun comments, but also full of lots of useful info (for example, the two threads "Skiing dead dead fast!!!" that came up among my search results for "inside edges").

And now that I noticed this current thread with thoughts about organising a big j2ski-ers group trip in 2013, I was thrilled to see it, because just the other day I've been pondering if I could join such a group; I'll be turning 50 this year and I've come to find it apparently impossible to convince any of my old friends (with whom I used to go skiing back in the 80's) to meet up for a 'real' ski vacation, be it for various family/work/finances constraints, or just because some of them simply "slowed down"; so finding a group of ski enthusiasts around my age bracket sounded like a great idea. A while back I've searched for any such groups in my area, but the only ones showing up in my searches seemed to be in a way much younger range, so I did not attempt any contact.

I actually just posted a reply the other day on an older thread started by another j2ski member (Bev Springham) on the subject of group-ski-trip. She seems to have previously organized some ski vacations with other j2ski-ers. It's not quite clear from those few posts if they actually succeeded, but I'd say they might've, since I saw similar posts from her in three consecutive years (all three were for Meribel). In my post I asked if it would be doable for somebody from the US to join such group, my main concern being airfare and transfers from airport to resort...

So since you guys seem to think about organizing just group accommodations and transfers (excluding airfare), then maybe flying from the US (instead of from the UK) would not be such a problem, as long as I could find a flight to match the other group members' arrival, and I could join a group-transfer; therefore, if nobody in the group would intend to restrict the enrollment strictly for people from the UK, then I would gladly join! (please let me know of any thoughts)

And finally, after this long intro (sorry for the wibble!!!), I'll contribute some suggestions for the survey:

== For question #2 (school holidays): besides the yes/no, I'd add a 3rd choice: "no-preference", because if some people would go regardless if it is or not during school holidays, then having to choose just between yes/no can be misleading the survey results.

== For question #3 (resort choices): Some people might not care too much which resort is chosen as long as all of them are good choices. So, maybe add an extra choice to say "any-of-the-above". But that has the disadvantage of not showing what would be the preferences of the ones who are flexible. So maybe for each of the choices add one extra choice to say "Flexible, with preference for resort-'X'). Or, since adding one extra choice for each of the 10 listed resorts means would create 20 choices (and in case SurveyMonkey has a limit on the number of choices per question) then we could toss the current #10 question (equipment) and add a new question saying "Are you flexible in your choice of resort made in question #3".

== For question #4 (accommodations choices): Similarly to the reasoning above, for each of the three choices add one extra choice saying "Flexible, with preference for choice-'X'".

== For question #5 (ways to get there - drive/train/fly): Since you are not thinking to include the airfare in the group deal, then maybe gear this question towards transfers; something like "Would you be interested in group-organized airport-resort transfers?". I'd guess that whoever would be willing take on the daunting task of organizing this trip could inquire with the travel-agency/accommodations-management if they offer any group discounts for bus transfers...

== For question #6 (month choice: dec/jan/feb/mar/apr): This one is a tricky one, because some people might indeed have a very strict window of time in which they can go, while others may be more flexible; hence, the survey might end up showing a wide scatter of choices, w/o giving an idea of possible compromises. But I am not sure what would be a better way of presenting multiple choices with some kind of preference ranking. It would be great if SurveyMonkey would allow a "write-in", so people could write their choices specifying if they are flexible, and if yes then what are their #1 and #2 choices. Or if not, then maybe we could double the number of choices and name them "December-choice-rank-1", "December-choice-rank-2", etc.

Best regards,
Cat.

Hi cat,

Good thoughts - thanks for the contributions.

Look forward to more form you, even though this season has started to wind down in Europe for most of us.