The cheapest and most expensive resorts in the Alps - and you can get to both by train!
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Bardonecchia in Italy - the cheapest resort in the Alps (©Ufficio del Turismo di Bardonecchia)
Here at 2theAlps, we love having the chance to get our teeth into a new research report, so we were pleased to see the publication of the 13th annual Ski Resort Report from Post Office Travel Money in association with Crystal Ski Holidays at the end of 2019.
The report looks at the costs of holidays in 30 resorts across Europe (most are in the Alps with a few in Scandinavia and Andorra). The costs appear to cover everything you might need to buy on a week-long trip (on top of a basic flights+half-board package) including ski pass, ski/boot hire and six days’ worth of lunches and drinks.
The cheapest and most expensive resorts covered in the Alps are Italy’s Bardonecchia and Switzerland’s Zermatt respectively. Excitingly for us, both can be reached by train and are therefore featured on our new The Alps – Skiing by Train map! (see extract below)
Map image ©2theAlps
Unsurprisingly, the most expensive item is the lift pass coming in at £293 in Zermatt and just £139 in Bardonecchia although it should be noted that the Zermatt slopes are much more extensive with 350km of runs compared with Bardonecchia’s 100km.
As well as representing good value for money, Bardonecchia also topped 2theAlps’ list of quickest resorts to reach by train in a blog piece we ran back in 2018 www.2thealps.com/top-ten-resorts-by-train-blog.htm with a journey time of just under 8 hours from London St Pancras. Unusually for a ski resort, it has a mainline station and can be reached on a direct train from Paris in just over 4.5 hours. Zermatt is a little more of a trek by train (10h 50 mins on Saturdays this January). You do, however, get to experience the beautiful views across Lake Geneva after changing trains at Lausanne, and the excitement of the rack-and-pinion line at Visp for the hour-long ascent up to Zermatt.
