Many last-minute skiing vacations booked after early snowfall

Many winter sports enthusiasts have booked last-minute ski vacations this month due to heavy snowfall at the beginning of December, according to travel organizations TUI and Sunweb. TUI says that due to the snowfall, the number of bookings is five percent higher than in December of last year. Sunweb, the biggest provider of winter sports holidays, has seen more people booking earlier this year.

According to a TUI spokesperson, destinations in Austria are the most popular for winter sports, followed by France and Italy. "Italy has had a big growth of 20 percent compared to last year." According to her, the growing interest in a winter sports holiday in Italy may be because more and more people are looking for a more original destination than, for example, Austria.

She said there has also been more interest in ski vacations in Sweden and Norway. Skiing vacations in Scandinavian countries come with potential extra activities like, for example, a husky tour. "The spokesperson said that the certainty of snow and the child-friendly skiing areas are why many people choose this place as a destination," said the spokesperson.

The amount of bookings at Sunweb has been around the same as last year, said a spokesperson. "In the first week of December, we saw that the bookings at the French skiing resorts were 30 percent higher than last year."

She said that because the snow fell early in the winter sports season, some ski resorts opened earlier. Destinations in Austria are also popular with Sunweb, "the large, high-altitude areas with a certainty of snow."