Best Austrian Ski Resorts for Families
When it comes to family ski holidays, it can be difficult to beat Austria. Famous for its cosy, traditional villages and with many of its ski areas compact and family-friendly, all the ingredients are there for spending that elusive quality-time together.
In terms of costs, Austrian ski areas are among the most generous in Europe when it comes to free passes for the youngest skiers, usually offering these to an older age than most other ski nations. Then when children do start paying, they tend to pay a smaller percentage of the adult cost and until later in their teens, than most other areas too.
Add in all the family-friendly activities offered by Austrian resorts and the fact that most are just a short transfer from Innsbruck or Salzburg airports, themselves much less stressful to transit through than some of the big ski hub airports to the west, and altogether Austrian ski resorts provide a very family-friendly environment.
Mayrhofen
Mayrhofen has lots for families to enjoy together with some great attractions for kids making it a candidate for best family ski resort in Austria! On the slopes, besides plenty of family-friendly terrain accessed by easy-to-ride lifts, there’s a 650-metre-long family fun slope as well as a kids’ area in the main Penken terrain park. Off the slopes the swimming pool complex, complete with epic 101-metre-long water slide, is a big draw. There are also cool attractions like the White Lounge Igloo Hotel, steam train rides and playparks. Back on the snow there’s a ski kindergarten for the youngest skiers with its own snowy playground, a choice of ski schools dedicated to teaching your kids and under 14s receive a substantial lift ticket price discount, with savings on the full adult price offered for older teens too.
Saalbach
The Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn is a great choice for your family ski holiday with excellent ski schools, designated children’s ski areas and ski kindergartens. The resort itself has all the ingredients of a great family holiday – wide, gentle slopes; fast comfortable lifts and lots of family-friendly restaurants and accommodation even before they added special touches, like special kids snow play and learning areas as well as fun slopes. Then there’s tubing and toboggan runs (there are two, one floodlit, both two miles long), a fairy-tale forest and a treetop trail in the snow and much, much more. The new Kids Winter Challenge encourages families to tour it all, scoring points the more kids see and do and eventually receiving a cool medal as a reward for their efforts.
Skiwelt
The Skiwelt area which includes villages like Brixen im Thale, Ellmau, Going, Hopfgarten, Kirchberg, Söll and Westendorf is one of Austria and the world’s largest with 270km of slopes served by comfortable, fast state-of-the-art lifts (which are specially designed for additional child safety), but don’t be too intimidated by these big numbers, it’s possible to stay in any of the villages and find a very family-friendly environment. The ski schools take children as young as 2 years with non-ski child-care facilities for kids from 5 months or older either in the valley or up at top lift stations. There are four funparks and the special kids "Hans im Glück" ski slopes at Söll, Ellmau and Westendorf. Ski-Movie-tracks at Scheffau, the skicross at Söll and the Carving slope at Westendorf are all great fun and there are three illuminated toboggan runs at Ellmau and Söll and there’s much more.
Galtur
Galtur is located next to Ischgl in the Silvretta region of the Austrian Tirol, right on the Swiss border. Being located next to one of the biggest ski resorts in Austria, Galtur has sought to carve out a different identity and found it by aiming to become the best family ski resort in Austria. The main idea has been to convert its modest ski slopes into one giant family-friendly fun park with endless cool attractions for kids. Off the slopes there’s a strong family-oriented ethos too in the hotels and restaurants.
Ski Juwel Alpbachtal Wildschönau
The Ski Juwel area brought together the separate Alpbachtal and Wildschönau valleys in Tirol a decade ago connecting them with lifts and runs. With smaller, pretty family-friendly villages and lots of gentle terrain this is obvious family ski holiday territory, but the region makes an extra effort with snow play areas, snow carousels, toboggan runs, ski kindergartens and many more family ski attractions. For its 10th anniversary in winter 22-23 the resort opened a whole new state-of-the-art children’s snow play and learning area high on the slopes to further add to the many existing family-friendly facilities.
