The Famille Plus label has existed since 2006 and covers about a hundred mountain resorts today, seventy of them on our pages. It is useful — it says a resort has organised its welcome for children — and insufficient, because it measures neither the runs nor the prices. This article crosses the label with what our resort pages measure.
What the label guarantees
The charter has six commitments: a personalised welcome for families, activities adapted to every age, family rates, activities for young and old, staff awareness of welcoming children, and childcare services. An independent body audits every three years. A resort that loses it — it happens — really loses it.
What it does not guarantee: that the runs are easy, that the pass is affordable, that the flat is at the foot of the runs. Three things that nonetheless decide a successful week with children.
What the figures add
The share of easy runs. A 6-year-old skis on wide greens and blues. Our pages measure each resort’s share of easy runs: Valmorel, labelled, has 89 %; Les Saisies, labelled, is a plateau without a steep slope; Le Grand-Bornand, labelled, 89 % on the Chinaillon. Conversely, some labelled resorts have an area that is mostly red and black — the label is about the welcome, not the gradient.
The child pass, and the free-pass age. Most resorts give the pass free before 5, a few before 8 — Flaine, on the lists we read. The child pass costs 20 to 25 % less than the adult one. For a family of four over six days, the free-pass age weighs more than the label.
The ski school. Our pages give, for each resort, the number of instructors at the local ESF and its services. A school of 300 instructors has places in the snow garden during the February holidays; a school of 15 does not always.
Non-ski activities. Sledging, ice rink, pool: the afternoons’ programme. Our pages list them, named and located.
Ski-in ski-out or shuttle
This is the question parents underestimate most. A village resort where the flat is a kilometre from the snow front means carrying two children’s skis to the shuttle every morning. A purpose-built resort — La Plagne, Les Menuires, Valmorel, Avoriaz, Montgenèvre on its plateau — lets you go back to the flat for lunch in three minutes and send a tired child home at 3 pm.
Our pages give the village altitude and the bottom-of-runs altitude; when they are close, the resort is ski-in ski-out. When 300 m separate them, there is a shuttle.
Mid-mountains: the other good choice
With children learning, the big high-altitude resort is not always the right answer. Super-Besse, in the Sancy, Les Angles in the Pyrénées-Orientales, Métabief in the Jura: passes at €30-45, child-sized areas, short queues. The snow is less certain — our Météo-France records say how many days a winter it lies — but in the February holidays it is there almost everywhere.
The table below lists the Famille Plus labelled resorts on our pages.
