Package vs. D.I.Y. Holiday...

Package holiday, full board

Pros...

	One phone call or visit to a travel agent, and it's all fixed up.
	You are taken care of by tour reps at airports, stations and in the resort itself.
	Food is placed in front of you, dishes are washed, beds are made and the place is cleaned - without you having to lift a finger (err... theoretically, at least!).
	There are organized activities (intro drinks parties, pub crawls, fondue nights, thigh-slapping and yodeling nights - Austria only - sliding down a black run on a tea tray competitions) so you can make friends easily and get around the resort.
	If something goes wrong at your place - eg. no hot water -you can seek the help of the tour company to put it right.

Cons...

	Inflexible. You can only go where and when there are available slots in your price range.
	The best value slots are the quickest to go - often way before the pre-season scramble.
	Ditto with the best flight times. Who wants to start a holiday with a 6am flight, or end it with a coach journey boarding at 5.30am?
	If your chalet girl or chef is not that brilliant, then six nights of samey, mediocre food can be a big turnoff!
	If your party is a constituent of a larger group sharing a chalet, you might not mix well with your strange bedfellows, eg. they may wake you up when they come home hammered at 4am... every night.

Do-it-yourself-catering holiday

Pros...

	Very flexible. You can decide where and when and how you go - often at much shorter notice than with package holidays.
	You can pick flights, ferry crossings or rail trips to suit your own schedule and preferences - eg. you can avoid early rising, if you wish.
	By choosing your accommodation yourself (especially if you use a website with detailed descriptions and photos of property) you know exactly what you're getting and can avoid the uncertainty of strange bedfellows or of being dumped with the worst room in the chalet - you know... the one in the roof with a sloping ceiling 5' 6" high at one end and 3' 6" at the other! (Yes, we've been there!)
	When it comes to food, what, where and how you eat is completely under your control. You can have a big breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and a restaurant dinner; or you can lie in and skip breakfast, have a lunchtime gross-out at a mountain restaurant and beans on toast for tea. Also you aren't the "prisoner" of a single cook or style of cooking which may not appeal - and you don't have to get back to base at a specific time or else miss a scheduled meal.

Cons...

	You need to do more work. Two or three phone calls are necessary instead of one. Accommodation and travel have to be booked separately, and an element of "juggling" has to take place to get the component parts of the holiday together.
	If things go wrong at the airport or ferry terminal - eg. you miss connections - you don't have a rep on hand to help sort things out.
	There is no "friendly face" to greet you in the resort, no one to tell you what's happening, buy your lift pass for you, fix up your ski school lessons or point you in the direction of the bank and the post office. Similarly there are no organized activities, so you have to make your own fun and put yourself about if you want to meet people.
	When it comes to food you have to make the effort. If you want to eat in your apartment then you have to buy the food, prepare it and wash the dishes afterwards - perhaps using up valuable skiing time in the process. And if you eat out you have to make bookings, journey to the restaurant and perhaps have to pay high prices - especially if you're in Courchevel 1850! (Not true! Not true! See our coverage of the Bar L'Arbe and the Creperie Laura in the Bars, restaurant & shops page.)

Afterword...

So there you have it - a few different angles on the subject. We've tried not to be biased, but after having sampled both we're now firmly committed to the D.I.Y. method. But, as they say, there's different strokes for different folks, and you might have another point of view...

You decide...

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