6 foodie family ski trips

We've rounded up our favourite ski resorts for a quick break that guarantee great eating, too. Whether you want a luxury getaway in a spa hotel or a bargain chalet holiday, we've got you covered.

SkiStar Sälen, Sweden and Trysil, Norway

Best for… ease and convenience

We arrived during a blizzard, so we were thankful for a minimal transfer: the Scandinavian Mountains Airport on the border of Sweden and Norway must be the world’s most convenient airport. Just a 20-minute drive from our first destination, the Swedish ski resort of Sälen, there are direct flights from London Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester. There are five SkiStar resorts within 40 minutes of the airport, and a ski pass from any of these allows slope access to all. There are even ski lifts and a free bus service connecting neighbouring resorts, so there are endless runs for skiing.

The SkiStar experience is designed to make your trip smooth. Everything you need is on site, from a variety of restaurants and bars, to equipment hire and storage lockers. If you’re staying in the main hotel, you can head down to the breakfast buffet in the morning, then walk to the changing rooms to pick up skis and boots from your personal locker and ski straight out to the lifts. It couldn’t be easier – and, even better, there’s no need to cart wet or heavy gear around. Handily, there's also drying cupboards in rooms and the option of a pre-arrival grocery order (for those staying in chalet accommodation). When you’re skiing with children, these built-in conveniences make all the difference.

We also took a snowmobile ride to try local speciality waffles with cloudberry jam – crispy, light batter topped with whipped cream and jam made from the native berries, which are similar in appearance to raspberries, but with an orange colour and milder flavour. They provided a well-needed calorie boost for skiing. Other popular toppings include prawns, or for richer fuel, try potato rosti with lingonberries and bacon.

The free bus service means it’s easy to travel to restaurants around the resorts. So, while there's plenty of solid family fare available without leaving the compound, a short exploration can lead you to something special. Via the bus from Sälen – Sweden’s largest ski resort – are several restaurants included in the renowned White Guide, an independent guide to the best eateries in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Particularly recommended are the immaculate meats at carvery Lammet & Grisen; Appetito's high-end Italian, run by the charismatic Ulf, a Swede obsessed with classic Italian food and wine; and Frö, which serves hyper-local foraged fine dining. Finally, for classic Swedish dishes in a 17th-century dining room – including more cloudberry waffles – is Gammelgården. The wine and spirits can be a little pricey, but these are all excellent spots.

We also visited the sister resort at Trysil, a short drive across the border into Norway. Here, there are tougher slopes, but still plenty that are suitable for children – from wide, gentle nursery slopes with button lifts, or the ski school that takes children from age three to nine, at all levels. As with the other SkiStar resorts, there's also a spa with a swimming pool, saunas, steam rooms and jacuzzis to relax in after your day on the slopes.

It was all a revelation to novice skiers, and somehow our very active holiday was also a very relaxing one.

How to do it
A seven-night trip with SkiStar, split between Sälen and Trysil, is roughly £4,700 for a family of four, including a family room, half-board, ski passes and equipment hire.

Tschuggen Grand Hotel, Arosa, Switzerland

Set high in the sun-drenched, forested valleys of Arosa, the Tschuggen Grand Hotel is a standout luxury ski retreat in Switzerland. While its 1970s brutalist façade pays homage to Arosa’s architectural heritage, the interior is a sanctuary of sleek elegance and refined comfort, you’ll find plenty of luxurious sofas to sink into with a cocktail in hand and views of the snow-clad forest outside. Guests enjoy direct access to the slopes via a sleek private mountain railway which is just a few steps outside of the hotel’s own ski hire and boot room, which even makes popping to the slopes with young children feel like a breeze.

Even the standard rooms feel indulgent, featuring granite-clad bathrooms, rainforest showers, and plush Swiss-made beds. For those seeking an elevated experience, the Tschuggen Loft Suites offer breathtaking, double-height living spaces with floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the snow-covered peaks. These luxurious retreats include spacious lounge areas, freestanding bathtubs, designer furnishings, private saunas and panoramic balconies, creating the perfect mountain hideaway for families or couples, beautifully designed kitchens come stocked with complimentary soft and alcoholic drinks have everything you need for a luxury self-catering experience.

A highlight of the hotel is the Tschuggen Bergoase Spa, a four-storey wellness sanctuary flooded with natural light. Its signature glass sails, designed by renowned architect Mario Botta, capture the sunlight and create an ethereal glow inside. Built into the rocky mountainside, the spa seamlessly blends Alpine granite and warm Canadian maple, offering an indoor-outdoor experience with thermal pools, steam baths, and relaxation areas overlooking the snow-dusted landscape. A glass skywalk connects the spa to the hotel, making for a magical stroll wrapped in a cosy robe as snowfall dusts the valley below. The spa is completely family-friendly other than the sauna area which is adults-only.

Culinary experiences at the Tschuggen Grand range from Michelin-starred fine dining at La Brezza which has an excellent set menu (as well as an extensive children’s menu) with dishes such as quail breast with blackberry jus, turbot fillet with white coffee sauce and kumquat - to more casual. If you’re looking for alpine comfort food then The Basement is the perfect venue, enjoy organic beef grazed on Arosa pastures, swiss-style truffle macaroni and Grandma’s traditional apple strudel before heading to the on-site bowling alley.

How to do it
Book the Tschuggen Grand hotel from £575 per night. This rare includes breakfast and access to the Bergoase Spa and use of the Tschuggen Express.

Fiss, Austria

Best for… 5-star family spa

It sounds grand but Schlosshotel is no fussy five-star castle. This former hunting lodge delivers stylish sustenance with home-from-home understatement. Dinners – always five-courses – are served in the piste-view salon, with kids at liberty to dip in and out of à la carte, encouraging adventurous diners. The beautifully-presented buffet, far from a fall-back, has acres of fresh salad and crispy crudités, a hit-list of kids’ favourites, and a gallery of pungent cheeses. À la carte is defined by flavour-forward soups, local game, Alpine meats and lake fish, complimented by seasonal veg and superb Tyrolean wines. Save space for the daily-changing bonanza of puds, from macarons to a gelato bar and two chocolate fountains. Breakfast and lunch buffets are similarly proportioned.

Just as well the hotel is ski-in/out with the boot and kit hire room in the basement – waddling distance from guestrooms. A lift delivers to piste level where two ski schools and access to 212,000m of slopes topping out at 1,436m mean even in late-season, there’s plenty of snow. Pistes aren’t too challenging, punctuated by parks with ramps and jumps.

The hotel’s indoor/outdoor pool and hot tub has a soundproofed water slide curling down the side of the building. The adjoining spa – almost the hotel’s entire ground floor – has adult and family areas catering to both with dedicated saunas, steam rooms and a menu of treatments that almost tops the buffet for choice.

How to do it

Book at Schlosshotel from £175 per person per night, full-board, including kids’ and teens’ clubs, games rooms, cinema, and spa access. Lift pass (six days from £221) and equipment are extra. The nearest airport is Innsbruck.

Review by Sarah Barrell

Reykjavík, Iceland

Best for… an icy city break

Picture the most hauntingly beautiful scenery you can imagine, the low winter light that makes you contemplate life and the sound of fresh snow underfoot, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what winter in Iceland is like. Reykjavík, the small capital with a population of just over 122,000, is the ideal base for a few days on this awe-inspiring island where you can hike glaciers, visit black sand beaches and wander landscapes so fascinating, you’ll feel like you’re in an episode of Game of Thrones (some of which was filmed here).

Want to take your trip up a notch? Ice caving and snowmobiling are among the most exciting activities you just shouldn’t miss. Head to Iceland’s Langjökull Glacier (the long glacier) for such adventures with Extreme Iceland. Costing from around £250 per person it’s not cheap, but it is something you’ll likely remember forever.

After a day exploring in the cold, the very best way to warm up is with some of Reykjavík’s incredible food. Try Núðluskálin for tasty vegan noodle soups with a Thai twist or head to Braud & Co for sweet treats and the most delicious cinnamon buns that are perfect with a steaming cup of coffee after a day in the snow. Book a table at Apotek Kitchen & Bar, housed in the building of an old pharmacy, to indulge in dishes that look as good as they taste. The Icelandic lamb is fabulous and we’ve heard good reviews about the sea trout and lobster too when they’re in season – just make sure you save room for dessert. You’ll have earned those calories playing outside in the cold all day. Yes: Iceland is expensive but the place, and its food, make it well worth putting all other travel plans on ice.

How to do it

Stay at the Eyja Guldsmeden Hotel, with doubles from £162 per night.

Review by Lydia Swinscoe

Serre Chevalier, France

Best for… a bargain family ski break

It’s no secret: skiing is eye-wateringly expensive. Even more so for foodie families who aren’t prepared to drive the contents of their kitchen onto the Continent to budget self-cater. The answer? Trade hotel for hostel. Special Family Weeks with French hostel association UCPA offer three communal meals daily, après activities and group ski lessons plus clean, basic family rooms at piste-side hostels in some of the Alps’ best resorts.

Managed by British outfit Action Outdoors (including coach transfers if you really want to cut costs), almost all guests are UK families, so kids instantly find ski school pals who become meal buddies too. Mass catering rarely produces gourmet goods but hostel food is healthy, simple and varied – great for picky British eaters: a choice of salads and soups to start, followed by classic French meats, fish, and hearty, child-pleasing pasta dishes, plus French cheeses and ice cream. And with UCPA’s rates, you can even afford to ignore this bargain buffet and eat out at least once.

From the Serre Chevalier hostel in the southern Alps, for example, a free ski bus links the string of valley hamlets comprising the resort, where you’ll find affordable eats including atmospheric crêpe huts with extensive, kid-pleasing pancake menus. On the mountain, tucked beside a chapel near the Rochamout blue run, Le Peyra Juana (0033 785 279801) serves hearty Alpine salads and meaty plat-du-jour for around £14 in a cosy wooden cabin setting. For a treat, up valley from Le Monêtier, in Le Casset, Chez Finette (0033 492 244327) offers horse-drawn sleigh rides before good-value family dinners.

How to do it

A Family Week (in British school holidays) costs from £500 per person including accommodation in family rooms, full board, programmed entertainment, equipment, and ski pass. Coach transfers can be arranged. For more info, visit the Hautes Aples tourist site. The nearest airports are Grenoble and Turin.

Review by Sarah Barrell

Méribel, France

Best for… value luxe chalets

Ritzy Courchevel’s more affordable neighbour, pretty little Méribel is making a name for its super smart yet comparatively affordable chalets. In the heart of the Three Valleys, it also has ski access to 600km of some of the Alps’ best pistes. If you want to stay somewhere that, after a hard day’s downhill, award-winning Crémant de Limoux and canapés are waiting for you fireside, followed by a four-course dinner, this is the place for you.

Chalet Kalliste (sleeps 10) is one of 11 similarly catered plush pads set across Méribel’s hamlets where hot tubs, a chauffeur service and personal chef come as standard. Don’t expect standard food. Chefs consult with guests as to preferences but the vibe is refined, not fill-you-up rustic. Delicate portions of slow-cooked ox cheeks and lamb, homemade pickles and chutneys plus feather-light panna cotta were standouts dreamt up by chef Richard Boggie.

For classic Savoyard comfort food, Les Crêtes serves exemplary diots (savoy sausage), rich cheesy tartiflette, and reviving glasses of kir in its 2,300m summit cabin (with cable car access for those who don’t want to ski for their supper). Once you’ve exhausted such classic on-piste apres spots as La Folie Douce and Le Rond Point, Méribel is all about at-home entertainment. But should you want to venture out (and make use of that chauffeur) try a porn star martini at L’Abreuvoir (in central Méribel), and the caveman-proportioned côte du boeuf at Le Clos Bernard, a postcard-perfect wooden hut in the woods.

How to do it

Chalet Kalliste in the hamlet of La Gittaz is available to book from meribelexperience.fr. Nearby Moûtiers rail station has direct service to the UK via Paris.

Review by Sarah Barrell

Icehotel, Sweden

Best for… a tasty Arctic adventure

Dining at the Icehotel feels akin to a last supper. Exquisite cuts of salmon sashimi presented on a block of ice, Arctic chard dusted with dill powder, and cured fillet of elk with blueberry jelly (prepped by Michelin-trained head chef Alexander Meier) – are served in a cosy lodge opposite the imposing arty igloo in which most patrons have paid a packet to stay the night. Go easy on the Dutch (or Swedish) courage.

Not only is wine eye-wateringly expensive in Scandinavia, staggering around the hotel’s minus-5C corridors looking for the loo in your long johns in the small hours is not ideal. Upgrade to suites in the new Icehotel 365 (frozen year-round thanks to eco-insulation), for heated bathrooms accessed via an airlock. Save your alcohol intake for a must-selfie iridescent cocktail served in a glass carved from frozen river water, in the hotel’s much Instagrammed ice bar, before you bed down for the night on an ice-plinth bed, zipped into a four-season sleeping bag.

If you survive this, you may be game for a guided wilderness safari. Pilot your skidoo into the Arctic back-country, try ice fishing, learn some Arctic survival skills and, if you’re lucky, see the Northern Lights, before arriving at Enoks, a selection of smart wooden cabins, including a tidy little sauna, in view of Sweden’s superlative Mount Kebnekaise. Reward your adventurous spirit in its elegant restaurant, crafted out of wood to look like a giant Sami tent, where seared hunks of reindeer steak, delicately smoked salmon carpaccio and cloudberry panna cotta make for the ultimate off-grid dining experience.

How to do it

Scandinavia Only offers the three-night Icehotel & Overnight Wilderness Experience from £1,980 per person including return flights, transfers, two nights B&B at the Icehotel, one night full-board at Enoks, snowmobile safari and activities.

Review by Sarah Barrell

Discover more foodie travel tips at our travel hub.

Check out more family holiday ideas:

6 luxury family foodie breaks
6 family-friendly trips: gourmet glamping
6 eco-friendly family getaways
5 foodie family cruises

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