Christmas, New Year and February half-term: build your winter pricing grid in September
Across a ski season, three or four weeks routinely account for 40 to 50 % of a resort property's annual revenue. They are also the weeks owners most often undersell, simply because the rates were never set before the market opened. In September, winter demand takes shape — and that is when the pricing grid is decided.
Identify your peak weeks before you open the calendar
An Alpine season is not one uniform block: it splits into four very different demand regimes. Christmas and New Year concentrate the sharpest tension, peaking on 31 December. February half-term — three French school zones staggered across four weeks, layered with British, Belgian and Dutch holidays — forms the longest and densest plateau of the year. Easter closes the season, with demand hostage to snow conditions. Between those markers, January and March are the quiet weeks. A classic mistake is applying one flat high-season rate from 20 December to 15 April: you leave money on the table during the peaks and sit empty in January. Start by mapping the school calendars of the three French zones and of the foreign markets that feed your resort, then assign each week its regime.
Three price tiers rather than a single rate
Build the grid on a reference rate — the nightly price of a quiet January week — then apply multipliers. Expect × 1.4 to × 1.8 for February half-term depending on the resort, × 2 to × 2.5 for Christmas week, and × 2.5 to × 3.5 for New Year in high-profile resorts. These multiples are not opportunism: they reflect demand that exceeds supply by several weeks. The control mechanism is your booking pace. If New Year sells out in October, you were priced too low — raise that tier next season. If it is still open in late November, adjust by 10 % rather than waiting for December, when a discount never fully recovers the gap. Document every decision: that memory of past seasons is what makes the grid sharper year after year.
Minimum stay and arrival day: the settings that protect the grid
A high rate achieves little if your calendar fragments. On peak weeks, enforce a seven-night minimum with a fixed Saturday arrival — or Sunday, depending on the resort — to stay aligned with lift-pass and ski-school rotations. A four-night booking accepted at Christmas can sterilise three highly saleable nights. Conversely, open up flexibility in January and March: three or four nights minimum, free arrival day, to capture short stays and nearby guests. Add a gap-filling rule too: three weeks out, allow shorter stays on the remaining holes at a nightly rate uplifted by 15 to 20 %. Finally, match your cancellation policy to the stakes — strict over the festive weeks, more flexible in quiet weeks where leniency is what converts.
How SmartStay runs your winter season
At SmartStay, the winter grid is built in September and then managed daily. We combine your property's own history, French and European school calendars, the resort's event schedule and the rates of genuinely comparable properties — not the market average. Every peak week gets its tier, its minimum stay, its arrival day and its cancellation policy. The calendar is then adjusted daily against booking pace: raised when demand outruns the target curve, corrected surgically when a gap persists, and never by breaking the price of adjacent weeks. Each month you receive a transfer alongside a booking-by-booking statement, plus a full end-of-season review to prepare next year's grid. Our owners in Savoie and Haute-Savoie typically gain several thousand euros from these peak weeks alone.
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