Do you always go skiing at your own apartment?

[Kersh]

My girlfriend and I have been thinking about whether to rent our apartment out this ski season, not reserve any weeks for ourselves and plan a ski trip elsewhere?

What do you do? Do you have a holiday at your apartment every year?

Cheers Kersh.

PS - i'm not trying to set up a house swap scheme here.

[Normandy Cow]

Do you always go skiing at your own apartment?

No, I find the slopes much easier...

Sorry to hijack your thread with a cheap joke, I couldn't resist it! I need a bit of light relief after all the hissy fits on the other threads....

Anyway, to answer your real question, although my property is not a ski apartment, every summer we go to the Ile de Re for two weeks instead of to our house in Normandy. But the cost of our holiday rental is offset by the income we get from letting out our house, so it is not a waste.

[Martha]

Hi Kersh,

We come as often as we can out of season, and then the plan for peak times is that we don't reserve any weeks for ourselves, we just come at the last minute if it's not full. Because of work, it's impractical for us to plan trips far in advance - we normally have to do everything at the last minute, so there's no point in us turning down a rental.
We love it as much here in low season as we do in high, so that works for us.

This year, we did make a commitment to New Year with family members, because it was the only week everyone could do. Then we thought we may as well stay for the first week of January, which is always quiet. Apart from that, it's been odd gaps here and there. This suits us fine, though it wouldn't work out for everyone.

But getting back to the q - if the place looked like it was going to be rented for every single week of the season, we'd probably hold a couple of weeks back for ourselves. Unless we were feeling a bit broke, in which case we probably would come to Chamonix anyway and stay with friends or rent an apartment. We've got our year lift passes here, and it's great!

Also there are a lot of other brilliant places that we want to explore within an hour's drive.

We did turn down a couple of offers to rent the place for the entire season because we didn't want to have no chance of using it.

But - we have given a bit of thought to maybe doing a house swap with someone in the future - maybe in the US/Canada. Or Japan!

It's still very early days for us, so no doubt things will change.
Sorry about the longwinded post

[Kersh]

Hi, thanks for the comments.


Normandy Cow, I deserved that joke to be honest!

Kersh

[Hells Bells]

My girlfriend and I have been thinking about whether to rent our apartment out this ski season, not reserve any weeks for ourselves and plan a ski trip elsewhere?

What do you do? Do you have a holiday at your apartment every year?

Cheers Kersh.

PS - i'm not trying to set up a house swap scheme here.

Why ever not???

We have been to Deux-Alpes, but stayed in our place that week too. If it hadn't been such a poor year, we had planned a trip elsewhere, but decided to go to ours instead, as the snow was better. The good thing about doing your own bookings is, you can have a sneaky break when you have a gap in the bookings.

[Hells Bells]

We also had an enquiry for a season booking last year, but I think they were looking for somewhere less expensive, that they could keep all winter, but just use at weekends. I would have lost my apartment manager too, so turned it down in the end.

[Kersh]

Helen, maybe we should go for an alpine LMH house swap!?

Interesting to hear you'd have lost your manager if you'd have let it for a season. I wouldn't have even thought that would be a problem but obviously it would. We've onyl been renting for a short time but i'm not sure how many people do seasons on Bad Gastein. If someone was to take it for a season it would be ideal but i'd consult with my manager first now.

Cheers

[Hells Bells]

She is someone I wouldn't want to lose, but the people wanting to rent didn't want her services, so she would have found other places to manage. I was keen to keep her, but they wanted the place for the duration, no cleaning or changeovers necessary, which worried me a little bit. I was pleased they decided not to rent, as it wouldn't have felt like 'our' place anymore.