Catered chalet, apartment or hotel: which is actually for you

Every ski holiday starts with this question, and the brochure rarely asks it straight. It is not really chalet against apartment. It is who cooks, who washes up, who else is in the building, and how much of the week you want decided for you before you arrive.

Get that right and the week looks after itself. Get it wrong and you spend it writing shopping lists, or making polite conversation with strangers over the cheese. Here is how each kind of stay works on a UK ski holiday, and who it suits.

The short version

Catered chalet: someone else runs the house

A catered chalet is a house, or a big flat, with staff who cook and clean for you. On a typical week you get breakfast, tea and cake when you come off the hill, and dinner of three or four courses with wine on most nights. Many chalets pour the house wine without counting. You never lift a pan, and nobody has to agree a menu.

What it leaves out matters as much.

Lunch. You eat on the mountain. Some hosts will make a packed lunch, usually as an extra.

The night off. The staff get a day off each week, and that evening you eat out, with breakfast laid out for you to help yourself. It is a good excuse to try a restaurant, and a less good one in a small village in a blizzard, so book the table early in the week.

The spa. Rare in a chalet. A hot tub is the luxury touch, and not a given.

Who else is there. Book the whole chalet and it is your group's house. Book by the room and you share the dining table and the sitting room with whoever else booked that week. Plenty of people love that, solo skiers especially. Plenty do not. Know which you are first.

The changeover. Chalets run on a fixed weekly changeover, usually at the weekend. One group leaves in the morning, the staff strip the beds and turn the house round, and the next group arrives later in the day. So on your last day you are out of your room after breakfast, and a late flight means an afternoon with your bags in a store. Shorter stays exist, but they are the exception.

The catered chalet's bigger cousin, the chalet hotel, serves the same board to dozens of guests at once.

Self catering: your kitchen, your rules, your washing up

An apartment gives you a front door, a kitchen and nobody else's timetable. The children eat when they need to, and dinner can be bread and cheese at the table or a restaurant in town.

In practice, a few things the listing will not dwell on. The kitchen is usually well equipped and often small, so if you care about cooking, pack a decent knife and a corkscrew. The resort shop costs more than the valley supermarket, because everything has to come up the hill: if you are driving, stock up on the way. If you are not, many French resorts have delivery services that will have the shopping waiting on arrival day.

Bed linen and towels are sometimes included and sometimes extra. So is the final clean. If it is not included, you strip the beds, empty the bins and leave the kitchen as you found it.

And somebody cooks every night you do not go out. If that is always the same person, it is their holiday too.

A self catered chalet is the same idea with a whole house. Some offer a cook for a night or two, a good compromise for a group that likes to cook most evenings but not all.

Aparthotel: an apartment with a reception desk

An aparthotel, which French resorts call a résidence, is a block of self catering apartments run like a hotel. You book it as you would a hotel, there is a reception desk, and the better ones have a pool, a sauna or a breakfast you can add. You still cook, but you have somewhere to take the children when they have had enough of skiing and you have not had enough of the day.

France is where they are easiest to find. Cleaning and linen vary by residence, so check.

Hotels: half board or B&B

A hotel takes the cooking away and adds what a chalet lacks: staff every night of the week.

Half board means breakfast and dinner, in the hotel's restaurant, at its hours. There is normally no night off. Drinks are usually extra, which is the main practical difference from a catered chalet, where the wine typically comes with dinner. In Austria, many hotels also lay out cake and something savoury in the late afternoon, and the spa is often part of the stay.

B&B means breakfast only, and dinner out every night. That suits a couple who enjoy choosing a restaurant, in a resort with plenty of them. It suits a family with a tired small child much less.

Hotels are also the most flexible on dates, since many sell by the night. Plenty have what a chalet usually does not: a pool, a spa, sometimes childcare.

What you give up is space. A hotel room is a bedroom, so a group of eight has no sitting room of its own, only the hotel's lounge and bar.

Who each one actually suits

Families with young children: an apartment, or better, an aparthotel with a pool. Your own timetable, your own fridge, and a door you can close at bedtime while the adults have dinner. A catered chalet works too if you book it whole and the staff feed the children early, which many offer.

Families with older children: a catered chalet, booked whole. Everyone home for cake, nobody cooking, teenagers fed without negotiation.

Couples: a hotel, half board for easy evenings, B&B to eat your way round the village. A shared catered chalet if you like meeting people.

A big group of friends: a whole catered chalet. This is what it is for. One table, one sitting room, wine poured and nobody on washing up duty.

A mixed group, say two families and friends with different budgets and bedtimes: an aparthotel, an apartment each. You eat together when you choose to and apart when you need to.

Someone who wants to cook: an apartment or a self catered chalet.

Someone who never wants to: a half board hotel. A catered chalet comes close, but it has its night off. A hotel usually does not.

The bit nobody tells you

The number of people an apartment sleeps is a maximum, not a comfort level. French listings even have a phrase for it: coin montagne, the mountain corner, a sleeping alcove or cabin with bunks in it. A studio sold for four can mean two on a pull out bed in the living room and two in that alcove, in a flat about the size of a generous hotel room.

That works for a young family. It does not work for four adults with ski boots. If four adults are going, look at the apartments that sleep six.

So, which one

Choose a catered chalet if you are a group of friends, or a family with older children, and nobody wants to cook. Book the whole chalet if you can fill it. Share only if you are happy to.

Choose an apartment if you have small children, somebody who loves to cook, or a plan to eat out most nights. Check the linen, the final clean and what "sleeps four" really means.

Choose an aparthotel if you want an apartment's freedom with a pool and a reception desk. For most families with young children, this is the best of the lot.

Choose a hotel if you are a couple, you want to arrive on a day of your choosing, or you never want to think about dinner. Half board for an easy week, B&B for a curious one.

If you are still stuck, and there are more than four adults, book a catered chalet. The food is not really the point. The point is that nobody in your group spends the holiday shopping, cooking or washing up.