Ski Miquel - www.miquelhols.co.uk

Went over new year. Rubbish breakfast, generally recycled meals, drunk staff had to be woken up at new year to feed us, unclean rooms. Cold and indifferent. DEFINATELY will not return...

As a seasoned skiing family and regular visitor to the ski shows we find ourselves receiving e-mails from companies with deals and offers. We were tempted by the excellent snow this year and great offer from the company Ski Miquel for their property Christina in Saalbach , Austria for this Easter. The owner of the company, gave us his personal assurance that this would be our best skiing holiday ever and he would be in resort during the week to make sure all was running smoothly. We have 5 children ages 20,19, 16,6 ,4. Clearly we have many “boxes” that need to be ticked , most paramount is a ski school we can trust with our children.

Ski Miquel boast that “unlike the big companies they know the resorts and have time to talk”. It is unfortunate they recommended a ski school that was closed or failed to mention that half the ski area would close 3 days into our holiday and that 90% of the town was already closed!

We discovered the ski school closure through our own research and pointed this out to the owner who continued to reassure us that his resort manager, would sort everything in resort. This is something the manager wished she had known and confessed to us that he probably just wanted to fill the rooms.

We were told on the coach that she had managed to secure a couple of local instructors and we checked again that they would be able to offer the ski school package , her reply in her endearing Essex accent was that we wouldn’t pay a penny more and would get a full weeks ski school.

Our 6 and 4 year old fell quickly in love with their “ Snow (name removed)“ instructor and all was fantastic. Saalbach is a great resort , the chalet is conveniently located and the food is great and it even snowed on cue.

We became concerned when we heard that “ Snow (name removed)” would be away for two days despite reassurances no replacement arrived , (name removed) agreed to step in for one morning and we took the girls the rest of the time.

The owner and his wife duly swanned into resort and he quickly confronted my wife saying that he took no responsibility for what had happened. This public discussion quickly became heated and it took my intervention to take things to another room.

We were subjected to a poor rendition of contract law and plenty of legalese from a bumptious man who made constant use of “with respect (name removed)”. However, agreement was reached and he later confirmed that he would ensure that the instructor would receive the right level of remuneration to compensate him for the difference between the ski school rate we wished to pay and the private rate he wanted to charge.

The next day the final day of our holiday our excited girls were ready in their ski gear at 7.30am looking forward to their day with (name removed). The girls hugged snow

(name removed) at breakfast but he told me he had not heard anything from (name removed) that he would be getting paid. It transpired he had a change of heart overnight and furthermore he had disappeared. It took a phone call for us to confirm that he had been duplicitous in his dealings with us and the instructor and (name removed) felt he had to withdraw as he did not trust this man to pay him.

The girls were devastated as were we, and we took the tearful girls to find (name removed) who was on top of the mountain. He was unrepentant including accusing us of not paying the instructor.

The advantage of using a large ski company is that there is plenty of opportunity for recourse when things go wrong. In this case we were left literally high and dry with nowhere to go and our holiday ruined.