New Zealand:

New Zealand is stunning and people are kind and friendly. And compared to other continents, New Zealand is still cheaper. No other better place to take your very young children for a skiing holiday than Queenstown, located on the South Island. You can fly through Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland or Sydney, then take a small commercial plane to Queenstown. There are four major ski resorts: Coronet Peak, Remarkables and a little further out Cardrona and Treble Cone. Unfortunately, there are no ski-in ski-out in Queenstown, so throughout our yearly ski trip to New Zealand we only skied in the first two resorts. They have very good ski schools for all ages. There is easy access to the mountains by shuttle bus that leave regularly from the city centre.

If you want to take a one day break from skiing, there are many other activities such as exploring the city, Lake Wakatipu and Pure Glenorchy where they shot the movie “Lord of the Rings.” The scenes are simply majestic.

USA and Japan:

Other places suitable for young children would be USA. I have skied in Lake Tahoe, Stowe, Killington and Aspen years ago with friends and I also enjoyed them and I think they are also suitable for young children.  And most important for me, they have ski-in ski-out, which is very helpful when you have young children. Aspen, however, is one of the most expensive resorts in the USA and I tend to not take my children to luxurious resorts in general. In the USA, my children have only skied in Bear Mountain when they were very young, which was ideal at that time because it was combined with a Disneyland trip in Los Angeles.

Japan is also suitable for young children. We have skied in Nagano, which was once an Olympic Village in 1998. It is only a one-hour fast-train (Shinkansen) journey from Tokyo, which on itself is an interesting journey.