Have you booked your ski holiday? If you have, then be sure to hire your skis and ski boots in advance, too. Of course, you may already have your own kit. But if you don’t, and you leave the business of ski equipment hire until your first day in the resort, you’re going to miss out on discounts of 20-50%. These discounts even apply to peak weeks.
You’ll find offers at Ski Republic, Intersport and Skiset – all of which operate networks of rental centres across the Alps. Stand-alone shops are at it, too – including Brit-friendly Snowberry in Val d’Isere, which offers advance-booking discounts. Ski Service in Verbier offers the opportunity of booking your equipment hire online before you go.
So, what’s the catch? Well, there is one. Online, ski hire companies offer skis and boots across a range of ability and quality levels, at different prices – from beginner skis to fat freeride models and super-whippy race skis. But you can’t always specify a particular make or model. So if you’ve set your heart on a pair of Rossignol carving skis, and they only have K2s and Salomons, too bad: although you can bring a pair of skis back you don’t like and swap them for something else in the available stock.
One final caveat. These ski hire companies operate big networks of rental centres across the Alps – often with several shops in the same resort. So make damn sure you know where both your accommodation and the rental centre is before you book. You don’t want to add a taxi fare to the cost of your ski hire, because you’ve booked it from somewhere on the other side of town. (The official ski resort websites usually contain good interactive maps to help you master their layout.)
Read our Good Ski and Ski Boot Rental Guide too – for tips on how to get a good boot fitting in your ski hire shop.
Booked your ski holiday? Don’t forget to hire your skis and ski boots in advance too, if you need ’em. https://t.co/QIoU9RB0
I reckon there are as many reasons for not renting your skis online as for doing so. Your tour operator may well get you a similar price if you simply visit the shop on your first evening. Certainly we at YSE in Val d’Isère do. Our price includes insurance – the online price normally doesn’t. You are unlikely to get the ski you wanted, and anyway, how do you know in advance whether you’re going to need skis for powder or for ice? It’s crazy to pre-book boots – you have to try them before hiring. So renting online only guarantees you a pair of boots, not a good pair or the right size. And if the shop doesn’t have anything suitable, you’re stuck with the wrong boots. In my experience, if you’ve got a huge discount online, the equipment is likely be inferior to what the shop has on show. As you say, the shop may be miles from where you’re staying, it may not offer a delivery and pick-up service, it probably won’t offer to store equipment overnight, if you’ve gone through some other booking service than the shop’s own website, the shopkeeper will receive so little of your payment he will probably hate you, and on your trek to the shop you’ll walk past several others with better equipment at similar prices! Snowberry is certainly an exception, but on the whole I think that online ski equipment is as risky as an online bride…
If your coming to Verbier for your ski hire and need to rent equipment try Ski Service they offer a great discount if you book in advance.
https://rental.skiservice.com/en/rent
Top tip go to the home page and get a promo code to get more discount…