Choosing to do a Gap year ski instructor course is a big step, it’s a lot of money but it is a lot of fun and can genuinely be a life changing decision.
Gap Year Ski Instructor Courses The Xtreme Gap Difference
Xtreme Gap year ski instructor courses are not the cheapest, but they are the best value because we give you so much more.
Whilst many people do ski season, or take a gap year ski instructor course before university without seriously entertaining the idea of becoming a ski instructor, for those that do it all starts here. Finding suitable training partners was a long exciting process,with so many options it was important for us to be up to provide you with the best training, in the best resorts for exceptional value. Whilst we might not be the cheapest we believe our courses speak for themselves when you all the inclusions against other Gap Year ski instructor courses on the market.
What can you earn?
Whilst you will never be mega rich being a ski instructor, you can an a lot in a season once you are qualified to the right level(which is why we ensure our courses give you proper qualifications to a useful level) check out our page on how much can you earn as a ski instructor.
For many doing a ski instructor course is a great way to improve their skiing or snowboarding ability. This reason we only partner with the top training academies and ski schools in hand-picked premier resorts, which gives you better training and skills progression. Our ski instructor course in Val D´isere for example, delivers an average 30 hours more instruction than most other Gap Year ski course companies (that’s about €2500 thousand euros worth of instruction).
Superb Ski Instructor Accommodation Options
It’s not just the training though, the resort and accommodation makes all the difference to your overall gap year ski instructor experience. We ensure you are based in resort, and we do not cram in as many people as physically possibility’s into our accommodation (it is not unusual for other companies to put six people in a two-bedroom or put them in neighbouring resorts with a bus ride to the lifts). With our superb connections and commitment to quality,we ensure that you are not let down on the accommodation front.
Gap Year Ski Instructor Courses:
Work a ski season in France£6200
Get a job in France during the ski season with Xtreme Gap Year. Guaranteed work in one of France's top ski resorts and best ski areas.
Ski Instructor & Snowboard Instructor Course Val d´Isere Francefrom £8900
Train to become a ski or snowboard instructor in one of the most beautiful Ski resorts in the world. Val d´Isere has a huge stunning ski area, hundreds of kilometres of off piste and an enviable nightlife and atmosphere the other resorts only dream of. This is the ideal place to do your snow sports instructor course. Staying in central accommodation in resort, with state-of-the-art equipment we partner with one of the top ski instructor training centres in Europe.
Full Season Worker & Ski & Board Instructor Course France£8900
Work and earn as you get your instructor qualifications. Our season long instructor training course has been developed to be the most comprehensive of its kind, offering all the bonuses of its little brother –the standalone ski instructor & snowboard instructor course - with the added pull of a totally new routine and lifestyle, and an extended, season long stay on-resort with a guaranteed job offer in resort as well.
Xtreme Snow Xpert Canada£5299
The Xtreme Snow Xpert programme is for those who want to step up their Skiing or Snow Board skills. The ultimate snow sports skills improvement camp, to make you a monster on the mountain. Take your free-riding and freestyle skiing or snowboarding to the next level with Canada's top coaches and pros, ride the best terrain in North America and experience all there is to offer in the snowboard mecca of the world, Whistler- Blackcomb.
Canada Ski Instructor and Snow Board Instructor Course£7799
The Canada Ski Instructor & Snow board instructor courses set you up to make a career in the mountains. Receive intensive personalized training from top ski or snowboard professionals and gain globally recognized qualifications to start your snow sport career.
Your Guide to Working a Ski Season in the Alps.
Imagine waking up every morning to towering mountain peaks, fresh Alpine air and crisp, white snow, for five full months. Aside from the hard graft and the partying, that’s the life of a winter ski seasonnaire in the Alps in a nutshell, and it’s fantastic!
Be a seasonnaire
Working a ski season attracts people from all walks of life, tempting everyone from gap year students to retirees winter in, winter out. Youngsters looking for a break from studies between college and university are perhaps the most common seasonnaires in the Alps these days, but stick around long enough and you’ll meet plenty of other kinds of people.
Young professionals in need of a final hurray before knuckling down, middle aged snow lovers exchanging the 9-5 for a taste of freedom they thought they’d lost, and worldly wise couples enjoying a change of lifestyle in their advancing years can all be found beavering away in resorts across the Alps from early December through to the end of April. You don’t even have to be a pro skier to work within the slopes – after all, you can learn on the job!
Anybody thinking of spending a winter living and working out in the Alps has a huge range of jobs to consider, each with its own unique set of pros and cons. Whether you choose to work for a UK tour operator out in resort, an independent chalet company, a ski hire company or a bar/restaurant, the variety of work available is broad.
Chalet host
Running a ski chalet is perhaps the first job that springs to mind when considering seasonnaire work, and for those able to cook a decent meal, manage their time well and keep their chalet clean for guests would be well advised to give it a go.
Chalet hosting is all about routine, and the best hosts do make this hugely challenging job look easy. A typical day in the life of a chalet host goes a little like this: wake up, unload the dishwasher from the night before, deliver breakfast, clear away, vacuum and clean the chalet, make the beds, prepare food and snacks, prep the evening meal. Phew! Then you hit the hill with your friends, usually around ten or eleven am, and get back to the chalet for about five or six pm. You then cook and serve dinner, clear up, load the dishwasher, lay the breakfast table then hit the bars. That, in essence, is the lift of a chalet host for the duration of the season!
If you want to make the most of your spare time on the slopes, few jobs can beat chalet hosting – especially when you get your technique down. Other advantages include generous weekly tips from contented and well looked-after guests, and the chance to get to know and befriend new guests each week.
On the other hand, running a chalet to a good standard for a full season is an almost herculean task and only the strong survive! You have to be good under pressure, organised and skilled, otherwise it’s better to consider alternative employment options!
For future seasonnaires considering chalet host work, considering resorts with high numbers of chalet companies is a sensible first step, and the French resort of Méribel is a prime example. Almost all of all the UK’s ski tour operators run at least one property in Méribel so demand for staff there is high. If you’d like to learn more about what areas have a range of catered ski chalets where you may be able to research working for, click here.
Resort manager
If you’re a real people person with strong communication skills, being a Resort Manager for a tour operator or chalet company is challenging and rewarding.
From managing a team of rowdy young chalet hosts to dealing with suppliers and organising linen and food deliveries, checking in on guests of an evening, handling any last minute emergencies that may crop up and generally keeping the ship on a steady course, the life of a Resort Manager is nothing if not varied.
Some people do just relish a challenge, and running a resort for a season is certainly that! But the variety of the work and the satisfaction of a good job well done make it worthwhile for many.
On the other hand you spend a great deal of your time sorting out and apologising for other peoples’ mistakes, dealing with the fallout of various acts of stupidity and, when things go wrong, getting a good old fashioned telling off from angry guests. You have to have a thick skin to do this job and it’s not for the faint hearted.
Every chalet company needs a resort manager to oversee the delivery of guests’ holidays, and the demand for experienced and highly competent staff is high. Resorts such as St Anton in Austria have a very wide range of chalet companies in operation, from small independents to large tour operators, and they all need reliable resort managers for the winter seasons.
Gap Year Ski Instructor Courses
–If you’ve been skiing for a number of years, you might like to consider working a winter in the Alps by becoming a ski instructor. Because of the high level of specific training and the qualifications required, many people who opt for this role go on to undertake three or four seasons and maybe even make a career out of it. Few people would consider ski instructing for just one winter alone. Our range of gap year ski instructor courses make obtaining these exciting qualifications a reality.
For job satisfaction and the right to call the mountains your office, becoming a ski instructor is a wonderful way of earning good money, working hard in a tight-knit team and enjoying your job by passing on the benefit of your hard-earned knowledge.
A good place to begin research if you are considering ski instructing for the winter season is BASI, the British Association of Ski Instructors. From Alpine skiing and telemarking to Nordic skiing and snowboarding, BASI are the UK’s leading authority on ski instructor training. Courses are split up into levels, and level 1 can be attained in a number of the UK’s indoor ski centres. For level 2 a further degree of commitment is needed before you can begin instructing, and certain external checks such as CRB have to be undertaken.
So whilst it’s a bigger long-term commitment to be a ski instructor, the pay and the job satisfaction are far better than the usual run-of-the-mill seasonnaire jobs and who knows, it may even become a career path!
Bar work
The lure of working only in the evenings and having the entire day free to ski is pretty strong, and thousands of people apply for bar work in the Alps each winter.Some even apply to bar work whilst enrolled on Gap Year Ski Instructor Courses, to supplement their income. It’s a popular way to earn enough money to live on and see the season through in style, but like any of these jobs there are pros and cons to it.
The working hours are long and serving drinks to drunken seasonnaires and holidaymakers in a sweaty bar or nightclub all night is an arduous task at the best of times. On the other hand, the banter is usually good and if you’re working alongside your friends each night then the shifts pass quickly.
One strong drawback of bar work is what it does to your body clock. You’ll typically work from about seven in the evening until maybe two or three in the morning. Whilst you may be keen to catch first lifts and enjoy a full day on the snow before your next shift, you’ll still have to find time to sleep! Like it or loathe it, there are a lot of bars in the Alps and they all need staff so bar work remains a hugely popular way of working a ski season in the Alps.
Val d’Isère is a great resort choice for those looking for winter ski season bar work. It’s a very vibrant and lively resort indeed and it enjoys a very strong following amongst UK skiers. There’s also a lot of bars there, which bodes well for anybody hoping to work in this particular role! If this is of interest to you check out our worker ski season in France programme, enabling you to live in resort and get a job for an entire ski season.
Resort driver
If you’re over 21 with a clean driving license, a conscientious and polite attitude and the ability to manage your working day yourself, working as a resort driver is a superb way to work a season.
The job varies from company to company and resort to resort, but typically involves ferrying guests from the chalet to the lifts each morning and back again in the afternoon, assisting with food or linen deliveries and generally being the ‘go-to’ man (or woman) with a van.
It’s luck of the draw, but if you’re based in a compact resort with few driving requirements like Morzine, La Rosiere or Val Thorens then you could be on for quite an easy season, but if you’re in a spread out and broad resort like Méribel, Courchevel or Val d’Isere things could be very different. And regardless of the amount of driving to be done in-resort, you’re likely to be sent on various airport pickup runs and the like so it all balances out in the end.
Job duration
Seasonnaires heading out to the European Alps for a winter ski season will typically head out for pre-season training in mid-November. After a week of baking, driving, bed-making, cocktail shaking or cooking training with fellow workers you’ll be shipped off to your respective resorts for a week of setting up and preparing, and after that your first guests will arrive.
Once the first few weeks have put you through your paces and you’ve gained a little familiarity it’s plain sailing through until the end of April, when you’ll wave an elated goodbye to the last guests and begin a week of deep-cleaning the chalets before departure.
Of course, not everybody has what it takes and throughout the season the staff turnover can be high, so if you don’t fancy undertaking the full five months then you don’t have to; it’s perfectly possible to come out part-way through the season.
It’s hard work but the challenge is rewarding, and if you’re looking for adventure, you want to learn to ski or you’re already handy on the slopes, working a winter ski season is absolutely fantastic fun. You’ll build friendships and make memories that can last a lifetime, and come away with a real sense of achievement at the end of it. So what are you waiting for, start applying!
This article was written by Anna Campbell who enjoys providing great travel tips through her articles. Anna currently lives in London where she loves shopping with her friends.
Work a ski season in France£6200
Get a job in France during the ski season with Xtreme Gap Year. Guaranteed work in one of France's top ski resorts and best ski areas.
Ski Instructor & Snowboard Instructor Course Val d´Isere Francefrom £8900
Train to become a ski or snowboard instructor in one of the most beautiful Ski resorts in the world. Val d´Isere has a huge stunning ski area, hundreds of kilometres of off piste and an enviable nightlife and atmosphere the other resorts only dream of. This is the ideal place to do your snow sports instructor course. Staying in central accommodation in resort, with state-of-the-art equipment we partner with one of the top ski instructor training centres in Europe.
Full Season Worker & Ski & Board Instructor Course France£8900
Work and earn as you get your instructor qualifications. Our season long instructor training course has been developed to be the most comprehensive of its kind, offering all the bonuses of its little brother –the standalone ski instructor & snowboard instructor course - with the added pull of a totally new routine and lifestyle, and an extended, season long stay on-resort with a guaranteed job offer in resort as well.
Xtreme Snow Xpert Canada£5299
The Xtreme Snow Xpert programme is for those who want to step up their Skiing or Snow Board skills. The ultimate snow sports skills improvement camp, to make you a monster on the mountain. Take your free-riding and freestyle skiing or snowboarding to the next level with Canada's top coaches and pros, ride the best terrain in North America and experience all there is to offer in the snowboard mecca of the world, Whistler- Blackcomb.
Canada Ski Instructor and Snow Board Instructor Course£7799
The Canada Ski Instructor & Snow board instructor courses set you up to make a career in the mountains. Receive intensive personalized training from top ski or snowboard professionals and gain globally recognized qualifications to start your snow sport career.