A catered chalet looks more expensive on paper. £1,200pp for the week against £700pp self-catered for the same property: the premium seems obvious. Then you start adding up groceries, restaurants, and wine, and the maths gets a lot more interesting.
What "catered" actually includes
A standard catered week, by most British chalet operators:
- Breakfast every day, usually cooked and often impressively so
- Afternoon tea with home-baked cake when you come off the mountain
- Three-course dinner six nights a week with house wine included
- One staff day off (usually Wednesday), when you're on your own for dinner
That's roughly 19 meals plus wine for the week per person.
The real cost of self-catering
Take an 8-person chalet in Morzine for a peak week. Self-catered headline price: £700pp. Now add:
| Item | Per person | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Supermarket food shop | £140 | Auchan run on Sunday |
| Restaurant dinners (3 nights) | £180 | Allowing £60pp/night including wine |
| On-mountain lunches × 6 | £150 | Tartiflette costs more than you think |
| Wine/beer for the chalet | £80 | Conservative |
| Catered breakfast you wish you had × 7 | £0 | But also no croissants |
| Total food/drink | £550 | |
| All-in self-catered | £1,250 |
Compare that to catered at £1,200pp all-in, plus three lunches on the mountain (£75), for a total of £1,275.
Catered is, on these numbers, about £25 more expensive. For which you get: no shopping, no cooking, no washing up, someone else figuring out the menu, and consistent wine pours.
When self-catered makes sense
The numbers swing in favour of self-catering in three scenarios:
- You have a serious cook in the group who'd rather cook than ski some afternoons
- You're a couple or a family of four, where economies of scale work against you once chalet hosts price per person
- You're staying in a resort with great restaurants you actually want to visit (Megève, St Anton, Verbier)
When catered is the obvious call
- Mixed groups where someone always wants something different
- Families with small children where dinner-time is a battlefield
- First-time chalet holiday, where the all-inclusive experience is what people remember
- You earn more than the host's cook saves you: your time off skiing has a value
The hidden third option
A growing number of hosts offer part-catered weeks: breakfast and one or two dinners, with the kitchen yours the rest of the time. Often the best value-for-experience of the three. Filter for "flexible catering" when you search chalets to find them.