The Best Family Ski Resorts, and What Makes One Work

Almost every resort has green runs, and almost every resort's marketing says it is great for families. Neither fact tells you anything useful. What decides whether a family ski week works is a short list of unglamorous things: how far the walk is from the car to the ski school, whether there is somewhere warm to eat at eleven, and whether the beginner area is out of the way of the fast traffic.

This page covers the features that actually matter, then the resorts that have them.

The seven things that matter

1. A separated beginner area. Not a gentle run at the bottom of the mountain that everyone else also finishes on — a physically separate zone with its own lift. This is the single biggest difference between a good and a bad family resort.
2. Ski school capacity, not just existence. Peak-week group lessons sell out in October at the good resorts. A resort with a small school is a resort where your children do not get lessons.
3. Short distances. Every metre between the car, the ski room, the school meeting point and the lift gets walked four times a day in ski boots while carrying something.
4. Indoor space at the base. Somewhere to sit, warm up, eat and take boots off without buying anything. Surprisingly rare.
5. A lift system that does not require a plan. Interconnected resorts are wonderful for adults and a source of genuine anxiety with a seven-year-old who skis at a different speed.
6. Childcare for the ones too young to ski. Licensed daycare on the mountain, not a babysitting list.
7. Somewhere to eat at 11:30. Children get hungry before the adult lunch rush and get miserable during it.

North America

Smugglers' Notch, Vermont

Built around the family market more completely than anywhere else in the United States. Childcare from infancy, an unusually structured children's programme, and pricing that assumes a family rather than treating one as four adults. The terrain is smaller than the big western resorts, which for a first family trip is a feature.

Keystone, Colorado

Kids-ski-free arrangements, a large and well-run children's school, and a base area designed around getting families from a car park to a lesson without a hike. It also runs night skiing, which gives you a second shape of day when someone has napped through the afternoon.

Northstar, California

The most family-tuned of the Tahoe resorts. A compact, walkable mid-mountain village, good beginner terrain separated from the main flow, and a short drive to the rest of Tahoe if the adults want a change.

Sun Valley, Idaho

Dollar Mountain is a genuinely separate beginner mountain, a mile from the serious one. That separation is exactly the feature most resorts cannot offer, and it makes the first three days of a family trip far calmer.

Mont-Tremblant, Quebec

A pedestrian base village, strong bilingual children's programmes, and enough non-ski activity — skating, tubing, dog sledding — to fill the day that someone refuses to put boots on.

Europe

Les Gets and Morzine, France

Two villages in the Portes du Soleil with gentle, wide terrain and, unusually for France, real villages rather than concrete blocks. Good ski schools, and a lot of accommodation within a short walk of a lift.

Alpbach and the Wildschönau, Austria

Traditional Tyrolean villages with modest prices and excellent, patient ski schools. Less skiing than the big names, which is rarely the constraint on a family week.

Avoriaz, France

Car-free and entirely purpose-built, which is architecturally unloved and practically superb with children: no traffic, everything slopeside, and the children's village is one of the best-designed learning areas in the Alps.

Ellmau and the SkiWelt, Austria

Gentle, sunny, enormous by beginner standards, and much cheaper than the marquee Austrian resorts. A good first Europe trip.

Livigno, Italy

Duty-free, which makes a week meaningfully cheaper, and a long flat valley floor that is forgiving in every direction. Best reached with a transfer you have booked in advance — the drive in is the one hard part.

Booking with children: what to do and when

Where to stay

For families with children under about eight, ski-in ski-out is the accommodation choice that does the most work. It removes two shuttle journeys a day, it lets you go back at lunchtime, and it means a child who has had enough at two in the afternoon can be indoors in five minutes rather than forty.

It is expensive, and it is usually the biggest line in a ski package quote. If the budget will not take it, the next best thing is accommodation within sight of the beginner lift, which is often much cheaper than accommodation on a piste.

The bit that is not about skiing

Assume one day in five where nobody skis. Resorts that handle that well — skating rinks, tubing hills, pools, a bus into a real town — turn a bad weather day into a good day. Resorts with nothing but lifts turn it into an expensive afternoon in a hotel room.

It is also worth knowing that the resorts with the best beginner areas are frequently the ones whose terrain runs out fastest for a confident intermediate. If half your family is past that stage, cross-check against the resorts that teach beginners well and pick the overlap.