Organising a big group

[wacko]

Hi everybody, First comment on the board.
Just wondering does anybody have any suggestions or advice for somebody looking to book a very big group (30+ people).
I am really struggling to keep all happy. Nearly everybody is intermediate or advanced and this means they are picky. Criteria are, High altitude, Lots of runs, Good apres ski, Accomodation for mostly couples, On a budget and at peak time, 15th March. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Wacko

[ClaireBear]

30 people, you must be mad trying to take this on !

The best thing would be to talk to these people who do charter planes, and get 30 places there and then see if you can get to a resort. So I think you would need to talk to someone about organising this.

If you are all couples, maybe you could try and get on the Today FM Ski tip. I think they have places for about 100 people and they normally go to Austria.

btw. I think that the 15hth of March is actually near the late end of the season.

[xcountry]

Wacko : it seems like you are setting yourself up for a major headache if you try to organise it yourself. Imagine trying to get deposits for things. From my friends anyway it would be very hard to organise them.

I would also talk to a professional. I'm sure there are some companies who cater for large mixed groups.

[frodo]

ok I have done groups from 55 up to 90 over the past 5 years and they were all students so double the trouble.

First 30 on your own will be hard but then you have adults so it might not be to bad, a rule of thumb we used was one orginiser to every 10 to 12 people.

Your best bet for this is to talk to the people who specialise in this area, over the years we have used mainly http://www.skimcneill.com/ and http://highlife.ie/ both great but the big companies are good too like http://www.panoramaholidays.ie/AniteNextPage.asp?p=SKIHOME and http://www.topflight.ie/ski.php but either always talk directly with them don't just book it online.

All of them will do one free place for every 8 to 10 places booked whick can mean a free holiday for you and your partner or you do as we did and split the discount back over everyone.

That time of year your garanteed snow so high altitude isn't required so when it come to locations your spoilt for choice. Personaly I love andorra, alot of people will say its only for beginners but everywhere is so close that you can be on a new set of runs on a new mountain in less that half an hour and hey tax free bozze. Pas de la casa is my favoruite there.

xcountry mention deposits and while they can be headache a little preperation goes along way. Let everyone know well in advance what the plan is, arrange one banck account that all the deosits go into by 5pm whenever, no exceptions. Tell everyone clearly state their name in the naritive setion of the lodgment slip / online form, this is what you will see on your bank statment and keep the lodgment slip just in case. Same thing with final payments. Set the date for this a week before you have to give the money to the travel agents but don't tell anyone this, gives you breathing room.

I've loads more advice so anymore Q's let me know and good luck, happy boarding

[kid101]

me and me mates just get 2 apartments, and normally eat out every night. So with say 16-20 people you can organise it easily enough. One thing we did do was, because we had 2 apartments, was that we split the costs per house, so 1 group paid one guy and the other paid me. It meant it was a little easier collecting all the euros !

[Brian]

This year we are going to Bad Gastein, and we booked it through Crystal Ski, there are only 10 of us, but they did allow separate payments from the two families going on the same booking. If you have a group it's normally worth your while getting a professional to organise it. Of course if you are trying to save money this might already be out of your budget.